Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire
by Gold Ninetails
Summary: It's about Krystal's gem that she wears around her neck. Fox finds his own, too, and a few new people come in. I know I have a habit of making really long chapters... Single quotation means thinking! ^_^ It's quite done, thank you...
1. Another day, another solar system

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in Starfox 64 or Starfox Adventures. If I did, I'd be stinking rich and I wouldn't write this. A big sorry to Zoe2000 for kinda stealing her idea about an Arctic Fox. I really had no idea she had one in her stories, too. I only noticed after I was halfway through my story. The same to Foxmerc on the Alben/Aldon thing. Jeez, great minds think alike, eh?  
  
Intro: Okay, setting. One year after the Dinosaur Planet incident. On Corneria, I guess. This is based on the N64/Gamecube setting, which means: Fox and his team are broke, Fox never met Fara, General Pepper is not obsessed with suckers (haha), Krystal went off for her own adventures/answers, and Falco is still in the middle of nowhere after saving Fox's behind. I never finished the game; heck, I don't even have the game; so don't hound my butt for stuff like 'hey, Fox didn't do that' blah, blah, blah. Gimme a break wills ya? But I'd appreciate it if you would send me a formal e-mail about it, and then I would change or update my story about that.  
  
Okay, now on with the darn story.  
  
  
  
"Mnfff," Fox stifled a yawn as he sat down on the cold floor inside the hanger. Slippy, in his usual blue shirt and white army jacket, was tinkering with some gadgets on a large table beside the Great Fox. He obviously was also bored out of his mind. Peppy was nowhere to be found. He was probably instructing another class of pilot students. Fox smiled inwardly as he imagined how bored they were.  
  
A cool breeze came through from the hanger door. The 'door' was sixty feet high with a heck of a lot of chains and pulleys attached onto it. The rusty hinges hinted that the door wasn't used much. It was a large hanger; with enough room to house about a hundred of the Cornerian fleet and still have room to spare. Fox sat on the corner opposite the hanger door, and from there, he could clearly see the Great Fox to his left and his Arwing on the right, with Slippy in the middle. The last mission scraped off enough money to pay for the debt on the Arwing and the Great Fox, but the team still needed cash to earn a decent living, so they agreed to all get part-time jobs to get money for food and supplies. Not to mention a new big screen TV installed in the lounge of the Great Fox.  
  
Peppy, with his extensive knowledge on piloting, took up a job at the Cornerian Academy. Slippy, with his extensive knowledge of gadgets and how the work, got a job at the local electronics shop. Fox, with his ace piloting skills, got a job as stunt pilot for movies and carnivals. Fox didn't have to get out much, since his skills were only oddly needed, but one day a month still paid for more than his share of the cash flow.  
  
It was a beautiful day outside, with the habitants of the city rushing home from their jobs. Hovercars sped by over the green grass, and in this part of the planet, no roads were ever needed, considering the small population. In the distance, Fox could see green hills and the blue sky with the smallest trace of clouds, accompanied with the odd bird flying home. The city, although Fox did not have a view of it, was off in the distance. City, Fox thought, Some city whose biggest building is the convenience store.  
  
Fox's thoughts drifted off back to the old days, when he was constantly saving Slippy's behind from Andross's fleet. He missed the action. He missed the excitement when an entire solar system was at your fingertips. He also missed his friends. Falco, although he still kept in touch with Fox, was greatly missed by the team. Fox felt that his day wasn't complete is Falco wasn't there to make a dumb joke about Slippy's hat or about how Peppy's gray hair was showing up more frequently. Fox was twenty-seven, and he missed having another guy the same age around. Sure, Slippy was twenty- seven, but he wasn't as fun. Peppy the fifty-some-year old hare was fun to have around, but Peppy's age prevented him to have any actual fun with Fox, like hang out at the bar.  
  
"Fox?"  
  
"Eh?" Fox snapped back to life.  
  
"I fixed your G-Diffuser system," Slippy waved his large metal wrench around. It was as big as one of his legs, which was saying something.  
  
"Thanks," Fox said half-heartedly.  
  
"Geez," Slippy mumbled as he turned back to his work, "It's like no one cares about me anymore."  
  
"It's not that," Fox said as he got up and straightened his trademark vest and bandana, "It's just that it wasn't broken."  
  
Slippy's green face turned red like a traffic light.  
  
"Let's go down to the city. It's deadpan boring here," Fox said.  
  
"Sure."  
  
**  
  
"Hey, check it out! It's Fox McCloud!" A young squirrel pointed excitedly at Fox and pulling on his friend's red bandana (which, if fact, looked just like Fox's).  
  
Again, the boring confinements of the hanger have forced the StarFox team to wander the cement streets of Hansonville, looking for fun. Most of the buildings around the place were small apartments or houses, but there was the occasional arcade or restaurant.  
  
"Oh, oh! Fox, can I have your autograph?" The squirrel's friend, a mouse, shoved him aside and was pointing a pen at Fox.  
  
"Some idea, Fox," Slippy muttered as a female sparrow asked Fox if he had time on Sunday to go to the opera with her.  
  
"I dunno, I kinda like the attention," Fox muttered back as he signed a badger's shirt with a novelty nib pen. Slippy snorted and started walking away.  
  
"Well, I don't have any idea how we can get some quiet time in this-Oof!" Slippy the toad slammed right into an old rabbit.  
  
"Why don't ya watch where you're going you clumsy. Oh, Slippy," Peppy looked like he was in a hurry, considering he had a big bundle of books he didn't even have bothered to put in his bag. His army jacket was thrown on backwards, and his orange shirt poking untidily beneath his white jacket had something that looked like a carrot juice stain on it.  
  
"Oh! Sorry Peppy, didn't see ya there," Slippy said as he helped Peppy up.  
  
"I was looking for you two," Peppy grunted as he got up from the cement walkway, " General Pepper wanted you on another assignment."  
  
"We haven't had one of those in a while," Fox said as he took Peppy's bag and books for him, "What's it about this time?"  
  
"Oh, you won't like this, Junior," Peppy grinned mock-evilly, "Exploration."  
  
"Say again?"  
  
"Exploration," Peppy said, raising his voice a little, "General Pepper wants the exploration and colonization of a close-by solar system, about, what. Three hundred light years away. Most of the planets seem habitable, but they haven't even got a name for it. They want us to go out there and name the whole place."  
  
"That doesn't sound too bad," Fox said sarcastically, "We'll just get a warm welcome from whatever 'un-hostile' creatures that live there."  
  
"Told you ya wouldn't like it."  
  
"I've already got a name for a planet!" Slippy squeaked excitedly and waving his arms around dramatically, "'Slippy World'."  
  
Fox and Peppy cracked up as they headed back to the hanger.  
  
"Hey, I was serious!" Slippy angrily picked up a small rock and hurled it at Fox. He missed by three yards and hit the badger.  
  
**  
  
A large whoosh and the powering-up of an engine were audible as the Great Fox started speeding down the runway and taking flight.  
  
"Fox! Watch your gravity gauge!" Peppy yelled as his head was scrunched into his seat.  
  
"Sorry, Pep. You know I haven't flown this in a long while."  
  
"Then let me take over!" Peppy uttered a curse as his large foot was suddenly thrown forward into the computer panel in Fox's braking.  
  
"Keep your dentures on, old bunny, were entering space now," Fox unbuckled his safety belt and let Rob the Robot, who was thrown around during the whole ordeal, take over.  
  
"Good flying, Fox," Rob said.  
  
"When did you get sarcasm?" Fox asked as he exited the cockpit and went to the lounge.  
  
The lounge, or den, was merely a carpeted place on the Great Fox were the team could relax and get some fun time. Fox didn't put much thought into it. He just scrunched two small couches on the corners of the side with the door and a small TV opposite the door. Fox also managed to buy a large coffee table to stick in the center of the room and put a small juice desk for Slippy under the window.  
  
"Oh, my bones," Peppy muttered as he followed Fox, "Your father would've had a good laugh from this, Junior."  
  
"Yeah, but he'd be laughing at us, not with us," Slippy groaned as he sat down on a couch, his jumpsuit's electrical components (ones he installed himself) were going haywire, trying to zip and unzip the thing at the same time.  
  
"Slip, you did nail the furniture down, right?" Fox said as he stretched out on the second couch.  
  
"Yeah, but what's the point? The ship's got a gravity simulation anyway."  
  
"Fox's flying is the point, Slip," Peppy muttered.  
  
"We are entering hyperdrive. Please do not have any liquids out during the start and end of the hyperdrive," Rob's robotic voice came over the intercom.  
  
A zipping sound vibrated the floor of the Great Fox as the ship went speeding a light year a minute.  
  
"Hey! I just got a theory! If we were traveling faster than light, and if we shone a light from the Great Fox, the light would theoretically move faster than ordinary light," Slippy declared.  
  
"Nerd," Peppy and Fox said together.  
  
**  
  
Beep. Beep.  
  
"Ah, shut up," Fox slammed his fist on his alarm clock and pulled off his sheets. Staring groggily at the circular window of his cabin, Fox saw stars speeding past them and the occasional nebula flying past. Fox pushed a button on the wall and a door slid open reveling Fox's closet. Fox took out a coat hanger, slid on his green jumpsuit and pulled his paws into the holes in his white vest. He mumbled sleepily as he pulled on his white gloves and helmet.  
  
White. Everything on the Great Fox was either white or dark metallic. Heck, Peppy pours enough cream in his coffee to make it look white. Shelves of books in glass cases. White. The walls in the cabins and rooms. White. Fox's bed covers and his office table. White. With the bright white lights that illuminated Fox's cabin, it was enough to blind him in the morning. Or was it night? A fox could never tell when it was in space, and hyperdrive distorts time on the Great Fox, so Fox usually had to go up to the cockpit (obviously dark metallic) and report to General Pepper to ask for the time. But today he didn't feel like it. He felt like wandering the hallways. Fox opened his door and peeked out.  
  
The hallway was just a white-painted, narrow place with lights of the sides of the floor to illuminate the place. Nothing much to be in, but still, it was fun (kinda) to stroll up and down the long place and think about things. There were stairs leading up to Fox's left to the cockpit, and there were stairs to the left leading to the engine room and the docking bay.  
  
Suddenly, something in the back of Fox's head told him that something was wrong. Fox spun around. Everything sounded normal. Slippy's snoring was enough to tell him that the personnel were okay. Everything looked normal. Yeah, white. Just as he remembered from last day. Everything felt normal. They weren't being attacked and the siren's weren't going off, so what was wrong?  
  
Fox walked out of his cabin and into the corridor. He walked down the corridor to the cockpit, but the short stairway and the door beyond it didn't seem to get any closer.  
  
'Fox.' A familiar voice echoed through his head, although he couldn't remember who it was. 'Fox.'  
  
"What do you want?" Fox said aloud. His voice didn't sound right. It was weak, not like his usual way of talking. Then his vision quickly blurred and he passed out.  
  
**  
  
'Fox. Fox.'  
  
"Fox!"  
  
"Gaah!" Fox bolted upright. Peppy and Slippy's faces swam into view. He seemed to be in his cabin again.  
  
"Take it easy!" Peppy pushed Fox back onto his bed. Fox didn't resist, but he puffed out air at Peppy. Everything was okay again; Fox couldn't feel the strange presence anymore.  
  
"What happened?" Fox asked. His voice was back to normal again, too.  
  
"I heard you talking to yourself, and when I came out to check, I saw you lying on the floor, unconscious," Slippy said.  
  
"What's wrong, Fox?" Peppy asked.  
  
"Oh, nothing," Fox lied, "I must've bonked my head on something. It didn't seem to leave a mark though." Fox felt his head. There was a small bump, and someone had tossed his helmet carelessly on the ground.  
  
"Well, it must've been some bonk," Peppy said, "You've been asleep for a whole day."  
  
"Oh, we've arrived?"  
  
"Yeah, take a look outside, it's beautiful," Slippy squeaked excitedly.  
  
Fox took a look out of his window from his bed. Indeed, it was breathtaking. He saw a small planet, with water and land. It looked a lot like Corneria, but with a godly air about it. It was oddly bright.  
  
"The system is composed of two stars. I did some analysis, and this planet is the only planet that gets no night. It's perfectly habitable, and it would make a wonderful vacation spot," Slippy said proudly, "First planet we want to explore out of the four. Looks cool, don't it? No signs of life, though. Warm climate, perfect for a winter holiday. Grab your swimming trunks, Fox, we're going down."  
  
**  
  
It was a cheerful little place. Everything you'd expect on a tropical island, except trees. The plain dirt and sand made the place rather eerie. There was a small, inactive volcano close to where Fox and his team landed the Great Fox.  
  
"Ahh, this is the life," Fox stretched out on the beach with his shades, watching as Peppy swam slowly through the ocean. The ocean didn't have any salt in it and it had small and leisure waves running across the surface. The water was blue and sparkling and Fox could see one sun in the middle of the sky and the other disappearing over the horizon. Slippy was exercising his creative abilities and built a sand base similar to the one the Bill Grey led.  
  
"You know what, Peppy? We should claim the island for ourselves and charge any tourists coming here. We'd be rich," Fox said happily.  
  
"Lucky my idea to wash ourselves, or else there might be a sudden giant-flea outbreak. Introducing a new species in an area is a dangerous thing to do, especially parasites attacking us critters," Slippy said.  
  
"What are you talking about, Slip? There aren't any animals here!" Peppy laughed as he swam back to shore.  
  
"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that," Fox pointed to a small bug on the sand.  
  
"Fox! I told you to use the soap!"  
  
"Well, you know me. I hate bathes."  
  
"Guys, stop arguing and look at the flea," Peppy pointed to the bug and Fox and Slippy stared.  
  
The flea was getting bigger and it was growing a tail and scales. It swelled to the size of an old telephone and Fox and his crew got a better look at it.  
  
"What happened to it?" Fox asked.  
  
"Erm. It looks like it evolved. It looks like an early form of a lizard," Slippy said as it quickly shed its scales, "Hey, it's a early form of a frog!"  
  
"Ha, ha! Meet your cousin, Slip."  
  
"Stop horsing around! It's growing again!" Peppy said.  
  
Now the creature was as half as big as Fox and it was sprouting brown fur.  
  
"Er, it looks like our friend Bill when he rolled in mud last year when you shot him down during that stimulation," Peppy said. Fox chuckled.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, it looks just like Fox!" Slippy said. Fox stared. Slippy was right. The thing stood upright and Fox got a good look at his face. Fox covered his snout with his paw to stop screaming. It looked identical to him.  
  
"Hello," Fox's clone said.  
  
"Er, hi," Fox replied, slowly reaching for his pulse laser gun at his belt. His clone grinned evilly.  
  
"I feel like eating something. How about rabbit stew?" Fox's clone bared his fangs.  
  
"Ahh, I don't taste good," Peppy stuttered. Fox's clone reached toward Peppy with its claws and fangs exposed, hissing madly. Fox kick his clone away from Peppy and raised his gun at him.  
  
"Heh, don't try your tricks on me, Fox," the clone laughed, "I already know all of them." With that, he gave a mighty kick and sent Fox's gun flying into the water and leaped up at him. The two rolled into the water and the fight ensued from there. Peppy and Slippy were helpless, as they couldn't tell which Fox was which, as Fox's bandana, vest, shirt, and pants were torn from him by a quick and sharp-clawed foe mauling at him quickly.  
  
"Gah!" One of the Foxes gave an almighty kick and sent the other sprawling to the ground, "Phew, some fight. It used all of my usual tricks. Feels weird, fighting myself." Fox splashed out of the water and waddled toward Peppy and Slippy. Suddenly, Peppy gave him a punch to the head that would've cracked the Great Fox's shields.  
  
"Ow! What the heck are you doing? Look, it's me! See, bump and bruise," Fox pointed to his head. He then pointed to the other Fox, who was moaning on the sand, "See, he doesn't have one."  
  
"Oh, sorry, Fox," Peppy pulled Fox upright as Slippy howled with laughter, "I've gotten my fair share of traitors and fakes enough to make sure."  
  
"Right," Fox hissed out as he felt his jaw, "We should put him in a cage and test him to see what went wrong." Fox jerked his head toward the other Fox.  
  
**  
  
"Hmm, his DNA matches yours, Fox, but he has a large amount of radiation in him," Slippy tapped the glass to Fox-Clone's cage, "He must've caught it in the planet. He appears to have every memory that you have."  
  
Everyone reported to the lab when they had put Fox-Clone, as he was named, into a glass tube lined with wire, to shock him if he breaks the glass. Fox put on a fresh outfit and joined them there.  
  
"Slip?" Peppy asked from a corner in the lab, "Did you check the planet's atmosphere before we went down?"  
  
Slippy turned red, "No."  
  
"Well, check it!" Peppy commanded. Slippy turned redder and typed in a few keys on the computer.  
  
"Hey, Pep, check it out!" Slippy squeaked as he pointed, jumping up and down, to the monitor, "Radiation! You were right. It must've been some sort of reaction to the flea. It had your blood in it, and the radiation transformed it into a copy image of you! Well, only very hungrier."  
  
Fox-Clone hissed, banging his fists against the cage.  
  
"Wow! So whatever animal that has the DNA of another will evolve into that animal?" Fox tapped Fox-Cloned tube and he hissed again.  
  
"Well, yeah, but if it had the DNA of a lower animal, it would turn into some kind of monster. Well, now we know how Andross created his bio- weapons: Ultra-violet light created from the planet's core or created by quickening the light waves by doing something to it with a prism. A lot of it, too. Remember that volcano?" Slippy turned to Fox.  
  
"Yeah, but it was inactive."  
  
"It was active, it just was spewing quick photons that can be reflected by the atmosphere of the planet."  
  
"Cool. So what do we name the place?" Fox asked.  
  
"Photonia?"  
  
"It has a nice ring to it," Peppy said.  
  
"Okay, but what do we do to clonie here?" Slippy jerked his hand to Fox-Clone's cage. Fox-Clone bared his fangs.  
  
"Evaporate him, of course," Fox said.  
  
"Sounds fair. No pain, no blood," Peppy felt a chill down his spine, remembering what happened to James McCloud. James was tortured for three weeks before he stopped breathing.  
  
"'Kay," Fox turned to his clone, "It was nice knowing me." Slippy flipped a switch and a microsecond later Fox-Clone was gone.  
  
"Hmm," Peppy looked at the empty cage in wonder, "You look strange without pants, Fox."  
  
**  
  
When Fox woke up the next day, he found Slippy and Peppy already at the table in the kitchen. Fox grabbed the remaining seat and yawned, showing them his fangs. They both shuddered and laughed.  
  
The kitchen was like the rest of the Great Fox. It had two doors: one to the hall, and the other to the den. It was made of white plaster walls of some kind. It had a boring, round table, a raised sink; some cabinets and cupboards stuck to the ceiling, lighting on the ceiling, and a large freezer/refrigerator. There were lots of canned tuna, flies, and carrots in all the cupboards.  
  
"I already did some analysis on the next planet," Slippy said through a mouthful of cereal, "Water. All salt water. There's no land in sight. It looks like the Blue Marine may come in handy again." Slippy smiled proudly.  
  
"Did you check for radiation?" Fox asked. Peppy snorted into his bread and butter and Slippy turned red again.  
  
"Yes, I did," Slippy muttered, undignified.  
  
"Okay, deploy the Blue Marine."  
  
**  
  
Slippy was right; the whole planet was water, not unlike Aquas. It was shallow, no more than thirty feet down with lots of rocks and dirt, and there were some exotic fish and plants, mainly seaweed but there were some that actually caught the fish with extending stems, that Fox had never seen before.  
  
"Mmm, that looks good. Gee, I should've ate more for breakfast, I'm starved," Fox licked his lips. Peppy came over the transmitter screen.  
  
"Don't you pull a clone and eat me!" Peppy chuckled.  
  
"Oh, I don't know, Peppy old boy. You're all skin and bones these days. Not much to eat," Fox chuckled as well.  
  
"Hey, I'm picking up something on the radar, Fox," Slippy said through the transmitter, "About six feet long, and heading right for you at twelve o'clock."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, Slip. I don't see a thing," Fox peered through the glass water shield. Indeed, there was nothing, but that was strange. Even the fish were gone. Fox twitched his ears, but heard nothing. His radar showed nothing. Fox shrugged, yawned, and leaned back on the seat.  
  
"Hey, it disappeared!" Slippy panicked.  
  
"Must've just been a magnetic field," Fox yawned again. Suddenly, the Blue Marine quivered, as if something small just struck it. Fox sat bolt upright. There was still nothing on the radar, but the quivering continued. Fox gasped as the glass cracked on the Blue Marine's window. Fox looked out. There was still nothing.  
  
"Something is going on, guys," Fox said, but the screen went static. Fox panicked. The thing hit the Blue Marine again, but with a stronger force. The whole sub shook like an earthquake. The window cracked and started leaking a little stream of water. Fox gasped and hit the gas pedal. The Blue Marine shook again, but it didn't move forward. Fox was just about to hit the ejection button when the face of the creature came into view.  
  
It was the most hideous thing Fox ever laid eyes on. It had the distorted skull of a fish, but longer and sharper, with spikes protruding from its forehead and chin. It had the whiskers of a catfish and the jaws of a pike. One of its eyes was missing and it had numerous scars showing Fox its skull bone. The body was merely tentacles with suction pads, like a squid, but longer and more sinuous. The thing wrapped itself onto the Blue Marine, and it was scrunching it into a ball.  
  
Eject! Eject! Fox's mind screamed. He slammed his fist on the button, but all he felt and heard was a dull thunk and more shaking. Glass was popping and cracking and more leaks appeared. There was only one way to get out now. Endgame death-match!  
  
Fox took his ray gun and shot at the thing's head. The glass shattered and the fish-squid started bleeding a green goo. It miraculously backed off and Fox struggled to get out through the window of the Blue Marine. He took one last breath and jumped out. Fox swam for his life, but he was down pretty deep, and one breath wasn't going to last him forever.  
  
All he could think about was to keep swimming, but he could feel himself go dizzy and numb. He was so close, yet so far. His mind popped and he let go of his breath. He felt his lungs fill with water as he swam on. Suddenly, the creature reached out to him with the tentacles and pulled him deeper. Fox would've screamed, but he had no more air left. In a last ditch attempt at revenge as he knew he was as good as dead, Fox pulled out his gun and shot at the thing. Instead of a ray of heat, steam came out of his gun and Fox felt himself get zapped by the battery of the gun. Fox immediately dropped the gun and looked at his results. The creature flailed in pain and swung its tentacles around. The tentacle around Fox's leg whipped itself around and flung Fox toward the surface of the water and right into a raft. The last thing he saw before he saw darkness was an old rabbit punching his chest.  
  
**  
  
'Fox.'  
  
"What?" Bright lights illuminated the room Fox was in. Fox couldn't move, nor speak properly.  
  
'Fox. You're not dead. Yet.'  
  
"Who are you?" That voice sounded so familiar, but Fox couldn't see where the voice was coming from.  
  
'Why Fox! Don't you recognize me?'  
  
"Father?"  
  
'Fox, the secrets will be revealed to you. Soon. Don't give in.'  
  
"Don't go!" Fox suddenly could use his limbs again, and he started running blindly.  
  
All of a sudden, the white room turned black, and the evil face on Andross appeared before Fox. It laughed maniacally. Fox felt a surge of anger and struck out with his fist. Contact! Andross reeled, and he seemed scared. He suddenly seemed to grow long front teeth, and gray ears sprouted from the top of his head.  
  
**  
  
"Darn it, Fox!" Peppy shouted. Fox's eyes snapped open. He was in his room, just like the last time he passed out. His mouth had a taste of salt in it, and his right hand felt burnt. Memories of the incident floated back to his brain.  
  
"How long. Sleep?" Fox wheezed.  
  
"Six hours," Slippy said, "What happened? Where's the Blue Marine?"  
  
"Big thing... Squeeze. Water came in," Fox coughed weakly, "Blue Marine. Destroyed."  
  
Slippy let out a sob. The Blue Marine, after all, was his creation. Peppy patted Fox's shoulder.  
  
"Sleep for a while, Fox, then we'll talk about it."  
  
**  
  
Fox woke up about four hours later, with the salt taste still in his mouth. He gave himself a shake and waddled toward the washroom. His salt- soaked clothes lay in a heap beside his bed, but he didn't really care for now.  
  
Fox thought a hot shower would do him some good, so he started up the water. He sighed as he made a vow never to eat squid again. The salt didn't seem to want to get out of his fur, and his right paw felt numb. Fox didn't dare look at it yet.  
  
There was a large mirror stationed on the wall in the bathroom, and the fox looking back at him after the shower didn't look like Fox at all. There were dark circles under its eyes and the fur was all tangled. Fox gave himself a shake and took a look at his paw. The shock from his gun had fried it extra crispy. Burnt pieces of fur were visible above bright red, blistered hide. Fox groaned and got scissors to cut off the burnt parts. After fifteen minutes of grooming, Fox managed to get something out of the mirror that remotely resembled him.  
  
Fox walked slowly to his cabin and put on fresh clothes and dumped his salty ones in the laundry chute and went to get something to eat. Slippy and Peppy were already at the table, munching on breakfast. They looked up at Fox and greeted him as usual. After Fox flopped down on his chair and started eating canned tuna they bombarded him with questions. Fox related to them the whole story, except his dream. Slippy still looked depressed about the Blue Marine.  
  
"How could you even think about that piece of junk when Fox nearly drowned?" Peppy swung his arms around in frustration.  
  
"It was like a brother to me," Slippy squeaked unhappily. Fox chuckled.  
  
"Did you analyze the third planet yet? Or are you still naming the second one?" Fox inquired.  
  
"We named it Aqueo, kinda like Aqua. The third planet is like a jungle. I found a complex civilization on it. No oceans," Slippy added, "Just rivers and lakes. I don't think there are nightmarishly freaky octopuses in lakes." Peppy laughed so hard he choked on his carrot.  
  
**  
  
Fox decided to just drag Slippy along for safety, since frog legs were a bit more desirable to monsters than fox meat. Lush vegetation surrounded the planet, just as Slippy had said. All of the plants were species Fox had never seen before. Slippy got a nasty surprise when one of the trees started poking its branches at him.  
  
They had landed a few miles from the city, hoping not to spark mass panic. Peppy stayed aboard while Slippy and Fox ventured off. There was no trail in the woods, so Fox and Slippy had to fight their way across the undergrowth.  
  
"Slimy," Slippy commented as he slid on some algae growing from a boulder that they climbed over, "Are we there yet?"  
  
"Almost," Fox muttered as he snapped a thick vine. Slippy stopped dead in surprise. No wonder he did that.  
  
Before them, there was a massive grassy clearing housing a great stone city, where the only structures were domes. There was no wall to protect the city, and Fox could see wind farms on a distant hill. Hydraulic doors and pneumatic window signaled an advanced culture, but there was no one to be found.  
  
"Wow, look at that!" Slippy nearly fell backwards while looking at the biggest dome, "Cornerian buildings look like pebbles compared to this place."  
  
"Feels kinda eerie," Fox whispered. Slippy nodded as they approached the domes. Out of nowhere, laser beams shot out at Slippy and Fox and struck Fox's helmet. Luckily, it bounced off and hit a tree. Fox was knocked dizzy.  
  
"I guess they don't like uninvited g-guests," Slippy stuttered. A second laser shot at Fox and he swiftly dodged it.  
  
This time, Fox saw the cannon on the large dome and pulled out his new ray gun and aimed. With years of training, Fox easily hit the cannon, blew it up in a fiery ball, and sent the creature that manned it sprawling. The creature, covered with either orange clothing or orange fur, toppled forwards and rolled down the dome. With a swift action, it recovered its balance in mid-roll and jumped off, landing with a clumsy thud on the grass.  
  
After a few minutes, it groaned and got up. Fox and Slippy watched in amusement as it kept on slipping on the grass and falling again.  
  
Fox leveled his gun at the animal, hoping it wasn't hostile on foot. The critter finally got up and started charging at Fox. Before he could pull the trigger, the animal tackled Fox over and started punching him in the face. Fox's academy experience instinctively told him to kick the thing. With a swift footpaw to the stomach, the animal went flying again. This time, it lay on its back on the ground, breathing heavily, and waved its paw in defeat.  
  
It was winded, and it didn't seem to want to have another sparring match. As it bent to get up, Fox saw its face. It was a fox, wearing an orange shirt and orange pants way too baggy for him.  
  
"Cousin of yours?" Slippy asked.  
  
"For all I know, I don't have a cousin and there aren't that many foxes on Corneria."  
  
The fox groaned and sat up. When it saw Fox, he smiled, his angry features disappearing in a flash. It started to talk plain English.  
  
"Hello, I didn't recognize you with your clothes and that toad for a companion," the fox said as he grunted to get up. He extended a paw to shake, "Sorry about the laser there, I don't think we've met."  
  
"Obviously not," Fox said, "I'm not from here."  
  
With those words, the other fox gasped and ran off. Slippy and Fox barely had time to exchange confused looks when the fox returned with a dozen more foxes dressed in the same baggy attire.  
  
"Who be you?" one of them asked.  
  
"My name is Fox McCloud of the Starfox Team," Fox said. The gang gasped.  
  
"You're not one of us?" They asked.  
  
"No. So what?" Slippy interrupted.  
  
"Quiet, slimy worm!" The leader snapped. Slippy gave him glare.  
  
"What is this place?" Fox asked.  
  
"We don't know. We just came here," they replied. Fox raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes. We are from a distant planet, whose secrets must not be revealed to outsiders. We have settled here for our safety, for we are outlaws framed for crimes we have not committed."  
  
"We are also from a distant planet," Fox gestured to Slippy and himself, "But we are not outlaws. We have come here for the sake of knowledge and exploration."  
  
"Then come with us," the leader said, "It looks like it is about to rain." As soon as he said those words, Fox felt a raindrop on his snout. He dragged Slippy, who still was obviously confused, off with the others.  
  
They led Fox and Slippy into the largest dome, where the inside was decorated with paintings and weapons. There weren't any rooms, just a big open space with lots of shelves filled with books here and there. In the center of the dome, there was a large table, and many foxes were seated there.  
  
"Tell us your story," a vixen at the table said. So Fox and Slippy began to relate their stories from the time General Pepper sent them on a mission. The foxes listened attentively and did not interrupt. A fox at the side was squatting in a corner and scratching down notes into a large, leather-bound book. His tongue was in between his teeth and his tail kept swishing lazily around. All the foxes seemed to be dressed in the same manner: Plain orange shirt and pants with a black belt around the middle. Occasionally, Fox and Slippy saw a young vixen decorated with a necklace or tiara. They applauded warmly when Fox finished the story.  
  
"So, Fox McCloud, do you come in search of knowledge," a fox said, more of a question than a statement. Fox thought about that for a moment, then he remembered his dream.  
  
"Yes. I come in search of answers," Fox said. Slippy gave him a strange look.  
  
"Then help yourself to our library," the vixen gestured at the shelves of books. Just then, Fox noticed something. All those years that Fox had never met another fox, he had always thought they all had a stripe down their head like him, but all these foxes had a plain forehead, but the color of their paws and body matched Fox.  
  
"Report to Peppy," Fox told Slippy, "I'll go reading." Slippy gave him the strange look again, but didn't complain.  
  
Fox walked slowly down the aisles. Every book was labeled clearly with the title of the book, the author, and the date that it was printed in. Most of the books were about planets, and the majority of those planets Fox never even heard of. He kept walking until a large black book caught his eye. 'The Striped Fox'. Fox stared at it. The book was dated to three hundred years ago. Fox blinked and took the book down and flipped to a random page.  
  
'The Striped Fox is the most peculiar and endangered species of the fox family. Although loyal, strong, and brave, they are stubborn and easy to temper. Clever as they come, the Striped Fox is the key element to the protection of the galaxy. They can pilot sophisticated aircraft and plunge bravely into battle. The Battle of the Centaur was thought to have extinct the Striped Fox race, although some adventurers rumor that there may have been other Striped Foxes scattered across the galaxy, we may never be sure.'  
  
Fox felt his mouth dry up. Was he the last of his species? Damn, this was getting really cheesy. 'But Father,' he thought, 'what has this to do with anything? So what I'm the last of my kind? Species go extinct everyday, but more appear.'  
  
Fox closed the book slowly and put it back. Mindlessly, he wandered off again, still thinking. He got so immersed in his thoughts that he didn't notice where he was walking, and tripped over his own feet. He bumped his snout on the shelf and a single book came tumbling down. 'Cerinia'.  
  
Fox stared at the cover. That name sounded familiar. It rang a bell about someone Fox knew but couldn't pinpoint. Fox shifted over and sat down. He opened the book, curious, and found that the entire book was written in some strange rune form. As he flipped through the pages carelessly, a small, bright green jewel on a fine chain fell out of the book. Fox looked at it, confused. Fox thought he had seen that somewhere, and decided to pocket it.  
  
"Hey, Fox!" Slippy said in Fox's ear. Fox jumped out of his skin.  
  
"Oh, Slippy. Let's go back now." Slippy noticed Fox's eyes were out of focus, as if he was daydreaming.  
  
**  
  
"Fox, are you all right?" Peppy asked the following morning.  
  
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just that I have never seen another of my species before," Fox lied. He could feel the chain on his chest, and decided not to tell Slippy or Peppy about it.  
  
"I guess you're right. There aren't that many foxes on Corneria," Peppy said through a mouthful of cabbage. Fox nodded half-heartedly as he leaned against the sink counter and listened to the whir of the can opener.  
  
"What'd you find in those books, Fox?" Slippy asked. Fox's elbow slipped off the counter. A beep sounded as the can opener ejected the can. Fox caught it neatly before it hit the counter.  
  
"Oh nothing much," Fox was beginning to feel guilty, but something inside his head told him not to give the jewel to Slippy to examine. He chewed slowly on his salmon, thinking about the book on his kind. He decided to ask a question, "Pep? How many foxes do you know, including my parents that have a strip on their forehead? You know, the oblong triangular shape?"  
  
"Hmm," Peppy put his chin on his fist to think, "Just your father and mother, but no one else. Why do you ask, Junior?"  
  
"Oh, nothing," Fox's mouth dried up again and he couldn't swallow his salmon, "Slip? What about the last planet?"  
  
"Same as the others, just that it's a dry and arid desert with sharp rock and mountains. Not much water," Slippy drank his juice, thinking, "Nothing else, but you'll have to search the surface alone, Fox." Fox choked.  
  
"Why just me?" Fox spat out his salmon and wiped his mouth with his glove.  
  
"I can't stand dryness and Peppy is too old to trudge through the desert," Slippy explained.  
  
"Just my luck," Fox muttered, "I hope you know who to blame if I die down there."  
  
"Heh, heh. We sure do, Fox," Peppy laughed, "You should fly your Arwing down; there isn't much room for the Great Fox down there."  
  
**  
  
"Status, computer," Fox said.  
  
"Status: OK," the screen read. Fox sighed. He leaned back leisurely and closed his eyes. He imagined he was still on Dinosaur Planet, still with his friends. Tricky, the Warp Stone, Queen Earthwalker. Bang! Fox's eyes snapped open. An asteroid had just struck itself on Fox's Arwing.  
  
"Status, computer," Fox commanded. The screen was blank. All of a sudden, Fox's engine went out and the Arwing shot straight into the atmosphere of the planet.  
  
Panicking, Fox hit the eject button, but the electrical switch didn't respond. All the electricity in the Arwing had gone out. Fox slammed his fist on the parachute button, but that didn't work either. That didn't seem right, since the parachute for the Arwing didn't use electricity. Fox slapped his head. The asteroid must've damaged the chute container. There was one way to get it open: Fox had to go outside.  
  
Fox slammed the cockpit window open and climbed out. The wind blew furiously at his face and Fox could scarcely breathe. Gathering his wits, Fox climbed carefully onto the top of the Arwing to the end of the ship. Fox saw that the asteroid had broken the latch of the container. Fox looked down. The red dirt was visible. Fox knew he only had a few more minutes. Fox strained with his claws to pry the container open, but he was too weak. Fox furiously banged his fist on the container, and it magically sprang open and the parachute fluttered out and opened.  
  
The sudden jerk of the air sent Fox sliding downward with a force that could crush his ribs, and he think it did. Luckily, he grabbed the wing of the Arwing just in time. He swung down, dangling dangerously only with one paw a few miles from the ground. Fox felt his glove get punctured by the sharp wing and felt his skin bleed. Fox scrunched his eyes tight. He was almost to the ground. Then, he lost his grip and tumbled down. Fox saw himself hurtle toward a razor sharp rock that was protruding from the ground just before all went black.  
  
**  
  
"Ow." Fox sat up, amazed that he was still alive. His Arwing had landed a few feet away, but it wouldn't do him any good to try to start it up again, remembering the electrical failure. As he tried to use his arm to get up, Fox felt a sharp pain. He looked at his left arm. The rock gave him a large slash, and the blood was still dripping from his arm. Fox crawled helplessly toward the Arwing and pulled out the first aid kit from the cockpit. He poured some iodine on the wound (insert Fox's most painful and loudest howl here) and wrapped it with cloth bandage. His right paw was also cut from the Arwing, and Fox could still see his bloodstain on the left wing of the jet. His paw was filled with dirt. Fox sighed as he started to lick it. Lick, spit. Lick, spit. Fox now knew how bad it was when someone got stranded on a deserted island with an injury and no water to treat it with.  
  
With a final lick and spit, Fox wrapped up his paw and took a look at his surroundings. The planet was mainly red desert. Sharp and tall rocks dotted the landscape. There wasn't a single sign of life anywhere. Fox snapped out his com-link and tried to contact Peppy, but only static came over the line. Fox groaned miserably. As he banged his head on the Arwing, the chain fell out of his shirt. Fox looked at it. Strangely, it was glowing now, and Fox didn't remember it doing that before.  
  
Fox put the empty first aid kit on a tall rock to serve as a landmark and then he headed off to see if this planet had any intelligent life forms. Failure was an option that had the highest possibility.  
  
With every step Fox took, the jewel seemed to get brighter, and Fox took that as a good sign. Fox made sure he could still see the kit as he walked on. Soon, he came across a large cave sloping downward somehow carved in a huge boulder.  
  
Fox froze in horror as he recognized the ship that was stationed outside it. It was a Venomian Fleet Interceptor. Fox growled as he imagined Andross camped inside the cave. He drew his ray gun with his left paw and went in.  
  
Outside, a shadowy figure raised a weapon and followed the unsuspecting Fox McCloud.  
  
Fox found that torches burnt by the fuel from the ship lighted the wide cave. Fox leveled his gun when he came to the end of the tunnel, which was pretty long down. Empty food packets were littered around a big bundle of blankets.  
  
"Say your prayers, Andross," Fox muttered as he shot the bundle again and again. No blood seemed to come out of the bundle, and Fox kicked the blankets aside, revealing more food packets. Fox spun around, alarmed, but was knocked out by a long stick of some kind.  
  
**  
  
When Fox woke up again, night had fallen and he found himself inside the cave, wrapped by the blanket he shot. The air was a lot cooler, and Fox could see dark clouds circling outside the cave opening.  
  
He heard a crunching sound outside, so he quietly tiptoed out. A figure was sitting on a rock, apparently eating a food bar. Fox touched his gun on the creature's head. It froze.  
  
"Who are you?" Fox demanded. The figure suddenly backhanded Fox from behind and tackled him down. Fox gurgled unhappily as his attacker choked him. His attacker suddenly let out a giggle. There was a strange glowing jewel on the attacker's chest.  
  
"Up already, Fox?" The clouds cleared and showed the stars and Fox was able to see her face.  
  
"Krystal?" Fox said, wide-eyed. Krystal nodded.  
  
"Fox McCloud," Krystal grinned. She looked exactly like how Fox remembered her: blue fur, metallic bracelets, the tiara and loincloth, even her bushy tail looped with rings was the same. She let go of Fox and he sat up.  
  
"How did you get here?" Fox asked.  
  
"Oh, took a ship with a hyperdrive compatibility from a evil guy. How did you get here?" Krystal asked casually as she sat down beside him. It seemed to her that hijacking a plane was standard procedure.  
  
"Crashed a few miles from here. Still looking for answers?" Fox wheezed as he felt his neck. She choked him pretty hard.  
  
"Yes," Krystal suddenly looked grim, "Have you.? I mean. Seen a blue fox lately?"  
  
"Aren't I looking at one right now?" Fox smiled a little. Krystal didn't smile back.  
  
"No, I mean another one," She said, pointing at her green-jeweled necklace, which was still glowing, "This means that another of my kind is near." She sounded really hopeful; too bad. Fox sighed and took out his necklace from underneath his shirt. Krystal gasped.  
  
"I found it inside a book," Fox said. Krystal's eyes seemed to shine more in the starlight. He knew how disappointed she must be, failing again. Fox spoke up again to try and cheer her up, "The book was about Cerinia. It was written in strange runes that I couldn't read. Maybe you could come with me and translate the book." Krystal smiled at Fox. She nodded slowly. Fox couldn't help but smiling as well.  
  
"Well? Let's go!" Krystal leaped up and pulled gently on Fox vest.  
  
"But my Arwing had an electrical failure. I can't fly it," Fox said as he got up and brushed off the dirt from his pants. Krystal had a mischievous smile on her face when Fox looked up again.  
  
"Oh, that was me," her smile grew bigger, "I didn't know it was you." Fox clicked his tongue and pointed to his arm. Krystal's features grew softer as she gently pulled Fox along without saying a word.  
  
**  
  
"Peppy? Come in. This is Fox McCloud," Fox said, squirming under Krystal's weight. Krystal had gotten the upper paw in their argument and now she was sitting comfortably on Fox's lap as he sped along space to the Great Fox. The Arwing only had one seat and limited space. Fox felt claustrophobic, but Krystal seemed fine.  
  
"Fox? Where have you been?" Peppy's voice came hurriedly and excitedly.  
  
"Oh, I had some trouble," Fox sighed and Krystal grinned slightly, "Open the outer hatch, Pep, so we - um, I can come in."  
  
"Roger that, Fox. Peppy out," with that, a flick of static ended the transmission. The hatch slid open a few seconds later and Fox zoomed through it, after shoving an annoyed Krystal out of his line of vision. After the Arwing stopped moving, the hatch closed and the sound of air hissing in was audible. Fox powered down the Arwing and opened up the cockpit.  
  
Krystal climbed out first, impressed at the machinery. Fox jumped out swiftly and led her down to the door. Another hiss of pneumatics was heard as the door opened. Peppy and Slippy were behind the door, but instead of greeting him as they usually do, they gawked at Krystal.  
  
"Where did you pick her up?" Slippy asked, not taking his large eyes off Krystal.  
  
"We met down there. She wants to go to the fox planet," Fox said as he walked down the corridor to the bathroom. He called over his shoulder, "Vaccine her for the usual diseases, would you, Slip?"  
  
"No problem, Fox," Slippy called, then turning to Krystal, "This way, please."  
  
**  
  
Fox decided to re-dress his wounds, so he took off his bandages. He started with his paw, but was surprised when it had already healed. It was a difference response when he found his arm healed as well, with no scars or mark. Fox decided he must've imagined it being a deep cut that showed his bone.  
  
Fox was just buttoning his clean shirt when he heard a soft groan coming from the lab. Curious on how Slippy was doing, Fox went in. The lab was filled with complex machinery, most of which Slippy built. Fox chucked as he imagined Slippy getting a beating by Krystal. Eventually, Fox had woven his way over all the tubes and all the wires on the ground to the infirmary. His jaw dropped at the sight.  
  
Slippy was dressed in white, his usual lab clothes, but it was Krystal that was startling. She was clamped vertically to the table, immobile. She had her eyes closed, and was groaning softly and tossing her head.  
  
"Slippy, what do you think you're doing?" Fox cried, waving his arms hysterically.  
  
"She is a tough patient, Fox," Slippy turned to the table and picked up a syringe.  
  
"But why the shackles? And why is she drugged?" Fox stormed over and felt Krystal's forehead.  
  
"As I said: tough patient," Slippy stuck the needle in Krystal's arm and drew a few drops of blood, "Kicked me three times when I approached with the needle."  
  
"Darn it, Slip! You didn't reason with her? Shackles are unnecessary," Fox's voice grew shriller with every word.  
  
"Well, she didn't listen. She kept on saying she had been to the Lylat System before and is familiar with the diseases," Slippy took the syringe and placed it carefully into a big machine beside Krystal's 'bed'.  
  
"Then listen to her!" Fox said.  
  
"Can't take risks," Slippy muttered, "Remember that time you came down with the fever and I had to drug and shackle you before you'd let me bleed you."  
  
"Well," Fox slowed, "that's me. Are you done?" He started to loosen the clamps. Slippy nodded eyes still on the screen of the machine, which started beeping furiously. Fox de-shackled Krystal and carried her away.  
  
Fox had to kick his door several times to get it open, as his arms were full. Krystal didn't seem to be that heavy, though her tall figure made carrying her a bit awkward. He set her gently on his bed and started to exit.  
  
"Fox?" Fox spun around. Krystal's eyes were slightly open. Fox walked over to her. In a flash, she grabbed Fox's collar, nearly choking him and shattering his larynx, and pulled him closer to her. Fox felt cold sweat pop out beneath his fur. Just as Fox was about to protest Krystal started snoring softly with her eyes closed again. Fox let out a puff of air as he set her paw down and Fox walked quietly away. People can be really weird when they're drugged.  
  
**  
  
"Do we have anymore tuna?" Fox flipped through the cupboards in the kitchen, shoving cans of food aside as he dug furiously. Slippy and Peppy were seated nearby, munching contently.  
  
"What's with you and fish?" Peppy asked through a mouthful of broccoli, "And no, there is no more tuna."  
  
"Well, what's with you and rabbit food? Whoops, sorry," Fox chuckled as he closed the cupboard door and took a can of trout instead. He just sat down when Krystal walked in, yawning. Peppy shivered as he saw her razor sharp, white teeth.  
  
"Good morning," she said good-naturedly, "Do you have any tuna?" Fox raised an eyebrow and Slippy laughed so hard coffee came out of his nostril. Peppy shook his head while he laughed as well.  
  
"Have some trout," Fox said, "I'll get you another chair." He stood up and walked off. When he came back, he noticed Peppy was giving him the look that Fox was going to be humiliated when Krystal left. Fox set the chair in between Peppy and Slippy to shut them up.  
  
"Mmm," Krystal ate slowly, but eventually she ate three cans. Fox usually didn't have room for two. Krystal set her fork down when she finished, "Sorry. You'd be hungry if you had to live off of dried bars for a month." Peppy nodded knowingly and Krystal left after. Fox embraced himself for the fireworks.  
  
"Nice match, you two," Slippy said.  
  
"Yeah, right. I don't even know what her last name is," Fox retorted, "Bet you won't find your match."  
  
"Leave Slippy alone," Peppy said, not looking at either of them, "And don't drag him into bets that he'll lose." Fox cracked up and Slippy didn't say a thing until their breakfast was finished.  
  
**  
  
Rob the Robot landed the Great Fox the same place as last time, but only Fox and Krystal set off. Peppy, too old, and Slippy, too embarrassed to face Fox again. The bushes seemed to have gotten more tangled than the last time, and Fox found himself more than once asking Krystal to cut him down, and vise versa. They managed to get to the domes before the suns set, and Fox had to hail the little fox to stop shooting as he dodged the blasts.  
  
Like the last time, the elders greeted him warmly, but they were more interested in Krystal. Fox listened intently as Krystal gave out some of her secrets. Fox knew she wouldn't normally have told everything, but there was something about the elders that made them more trustworthy than they look.  
  
"Your clan and last name?"  
  
"I don't know my clan. I don't know my last name, either."  
  
"Parents?"  
  
"I never got to know them well."  
  
"Your age when your parents died?"  
  
"Four years old," and with that, the elders chattered among themselves and ushered them off to the libraries. Fox looked at Krystal now with greater pity and sorrow, knowing how it feels to loose parents as a kit. His father died trying to slay Andross and his mother died a few weeks before by a car bomb. He was older than Krystal was then: twelve.  
  
"How old are you now?" Fox asked timidly as he pointed out the book. Krystal sighed deeply and opened it up. Fox was just about to ask her again, thinking she didn't hear him, when she answered.  
  
'Same as you, Fox,' Krystal flipped through the pages, muttering to herself and answering Fox at the same time. Fox, amazed, stuttered a bit, but then realized she was talking to him using her telepathic powers. So she could read his mind and put words into it at the same time. Fox made a mental note to not think of anything embarrassing in front of her.  
  
'Oh, like the time when you were fifteen and you accidentally got locked in the girls' washroom at the academy?' Krystal was grinning to herself, and still mumbling. Fox turned red beneath his fur. OK, so she can scan his memories, too. Fox made another mental note to bang his head on a table to forget everything embarrassing about him.  
  
"Don't worry, Fox, just having some fun with you. I won't do it again," Krystal said aloud as she smiled at Fox. She quickly turned back to the book and mumbled to herself again.  
  
'Why don't you tell me what you're reading?' Fox thought. Krystal smiled again. 'You got me just when it was interesting,' she thought back, get this: 'two foxes of their kind, obviously, kidnapped my parents and me, the 'female kit that will reform the race', and stole the Emerald of Earth. They knew that the world would reach acropolis, so they made a copy of it. Giving the copy to my parents, they told them to tell me to search the galaxy for the fox that possesses the Emerald. That way, I could protect him or her. Tsk, like you need protection, Fox.' She thought her last sarcastic thought and put the book back. She looked strange, but Fox knew that she was as confused as he was.  
  
"So I'm wearing the Emerald of Earth, and you're wearing its copy. The two 'saviors' of your kind made it so that you were supposed to protect me? Why?" Fox said all of this very fast.  
  
"Well, it has to be of value," Krystal said. She gave out a sigh, "At least now I got some answers, but what caused the acropolis? And what killed my parents?"  
  
"Whoever killed your parents was looking for the Emerald copy, so they could find the real one," Fox said as he put the last piece in this part of the mental puzzle, but most of the big picture was still shrouded in a mist of mystery.  
  
**  
  
Fox and Krystal returned to the Great Fox later, and they soon set off into space again. Krystal agreed to Fox's proposal to search answers in the Cornerian libraries. Finally, after all those adventures, Fox and his team were going home.  
  
"Had a good time, Fox?" Peppy winked as the team headed for the cockpit. Fox grinned and gently shoved Peppy playfully, making sure not to fracture his hip again.  
  
"Yeah, right. The girl kept on reading my mind. She knows about when Falco and Bill locked me in the bathroom," Fox said, helping Krystal get strapped to the seat. Krystal smiled mischievously. 'And I know about the time when Falco pulled down your pants in grade one and showed all the girls.' Fox frowned. 'Hey! You promised!'  
  
"I know, but I pulled that one out before I promised, so it doesn't count," Krystal whispered, and grinned her warm grin. Fox was surprised that this was the stubborn vixen that he saved just a year before.  
  
"Let's try my new warp drive," Slippy pressed a few buttons and a countdown began.  
  
"You built a warp drive?" Peppy asked in amazement.  
  
"Of course!" Slippy said, "What did you think I was doing all day during the whole week?"  
  
The moment Slippy finished his sentence, the Great Fox gave a great lurch and Fox's head was scrunched into his seat. A second later, the Great Fox gave another lurch and Fox was thrown forward. If it weren't for his safety belt, he would've smashed through the windshield of the Great Fox. Fox felt Krystal's telepathic lines open and for a moment felt her pain as well as his. 'Great ride, wasn't it?' She thought.  
  
Fox undid his belt and looked out the window. Slippy's warp drive actually worked! They were in the space between Corneria and the Meteo asteroid field. After Rob pushed a few buttons, the Great Fox gave a small lurch and they sped for Corneria.  
  
"That planet," Krystal said, "It looks familiar to me. I think I saw a picture of my own planet before, and it looks just like that."  
  
"Well, no wonder the names are so similar," Fox said as he helped Krystal out of her belt. Slippy was dancing gleefully around the cockpit, shouting in joy. He was singing an old song about sailing the seas of Corneria and how the ships sailed so well. His croaky singing voice made Fox and Peppy fold up their ears in discontent.  
  
"Ah, be quiet, Slip!" Peppy gave him a quick trip over the shins and he fell to the floor, "It didn't work that well. I think you should recommend the product for people with no back disorders! I think I'll be seeing the doctor again."  
  
**  
  
Fox sighed as he sniffed the fresh air. Peppy had rushed off without saying a word to hand in the report he had written for General Pepper. Slippy said he'd run off to the computer shop and see if he had been replaced. With nothing else to do, Fox decided to show Krystal around the small town. Krystal looked around curiously at the shops and buildings. Fox had given her a gray shirt and shorts, along with one of his vests. He had asked her to remover her armor and tiara, as she would attract too much attention. Fox and Krystal passed through the streets with people giving the usual and kind 'Hello, Fox', but they hardly gave Krystal a second look. Once, a young cat and his friends whistled at Krystal, but she gave them such a frightening look that they ran off with their tails between their legs (literally).  
  
Fox took Krystal to his usual hangouts over town: the bar, the coffee shop, the arcade, and the diner. Krystal seemed to like the tuna selections. She apologized over and over again after learning that Fox had to pay. Fox had to squeeze her snout shut with his paw to tell her that it was OK because she didn't listen to a thing he said with her mouth open.  
  
Bill and his team were stationed not far away, so Fox took Krystal to see him. Upon their arrival, Bill rushed out to greet them and congratulate Fox on his mission.  
  
"Who's this young lady?" Bill nudged Fox. Fox chuckled  
  
"Young? She's only younger than you by half a year," and so Fox explained how they had met and how they got back. Fox left out the part about the Emerald, as Fox and Krystal decided to keep it a secret in case the word got to Andross, if he got cloned or reincarnated again.  
  
"So you two are not going out?" Bill asked after Fox finished his story. Fox shook his head no. Bill smoothed his hair and turned to Krystal; "Can I have your phone number?" Krystal gave him a quizzical look. Fox told Bill that she didn't have one yet. Bill the now disappointed husky waved at his crewmen and told them about Fox and Krystal. When Bill had his back turned, Fox could see Krystal scrunch up her eyes, trying to scan Bill's memories. When she was done, Fox could feel a surge of Krystal's anger as her telepathic lines came through. 'That dog? Courting me? Why, I should give him a good lesson in-' Fox cut her off calmly, 'Get used to it. People think you look nice.' Krystal's anger seemed to grow, 'How shallow.'  
  
Bill's crew, the Husky and Bulldog teams, shook paws with Fox and Krystal, although they seemed to linger on her paw a little longer than Fox's. The last person of the crew didn't seem to be a dog, but more of a snow-white fox. He was very young, about Fox's age, and he was very appreciative on taking Fox's hand.  
  
"You don't know how I've waited for this moment, Mr. McCloud. You're my idol," he furiously swung Fox's arm around like a baseball bat.  
  
"Oh, I'm not much more experienced than you are," Fox said, "I've never seen you around before." The fox stood up straight and saluted smartly. He was wearing the same uniform as all the crew: green, but he had a small blue sapphire on a necklace.  
  
"Private Thomas Beverly Hilchey Arnold Ronald White," Thomas said, "People call me Tom." 'I think I know why,' Krystal chuckled in her mind. Fox maintained his posture as he thought back, 'grow up.'  
  
"Good day," Tom said to Krystal as he kissed her paw like a gentlefox. Krystal turned red. Krystal smiled and used her tail to slap Tom softly. 'Now THAT'S a fox!'  
  
"Thomas White. That sounds familiar," Fox thought hard.  
  
"Of course. I sent a application to join the StarFox team, but some old rabbit turned me down," Tom said. Fox let out a laugh.  
  
"Of course Peppy wouldn't let you join. He would hate having another fox fooling around all day," Fox smiled as he talked, "Slippy's working on a extra Arwing for me. I'll let you join and use it if you know how to fly." Tom looked simply delighted. He ran off without saying another word and jumped into a plane.  
  
A few moments later, Tom was soaring through the sky like an expert. Somersaults, barrel rolls, steep dives and climbs were made with ease and speed. Tom flew straight up and stayed in the air for a moment, then he dropped to the ground faster than a bullet. Krystal gasped and covered her eyes, but at the last moment, Tom pulled up inches from the ground and landed safely.  
  
"Wonderful," Fox cheered and clapped along with the others, "You're in. Now all you have to do is come to our hanger and sign a contract saying that you won't break Peppy's back; accidentally or on purpose." Bill frowned.  
  
"You just took away my best and newest pilot, Fox," Bill said, "He just joined today. I didn't even get him to sign my contract yet. I still want him on my team. Just bring him back in one piece." Fox waved reassuringly and he, Tom, and Krystal went off to the hanger.  
  
**  
  
Back in the metal hanger later that evening, Peppy was furious. He went rambling on about back in his day, they didn't let a pilot join after one demonstration as Tom scribbled his signature neatly after reading the contract, which actually did say that he could not break Peppy's spine in any way.  
  
"I just need to put together the plating and then paint it," Slippy said as he came in, wiping the grease off his hands, "The new Arwing will be ready in no time."  
  
"How did you manage to put it together in only a few weeks, when most of the time, you were working on the warp drive?" Fox asked in amazement.  
  
"I gave Rob an upgrade and he put it together for me," Slippy strolled over to his table and took a sip of his juice, which was hidden among other glasses and metal parts. Fox could distinctly hear Peppy mumble 'cheater' as Slippy told Rob to keep working on the new G-Diffuser.  
  
Krystal was talking to Tom, and Fox couldn't hear them, but he was dying to barge in and annoy Krystal. 'Hey, tell him what you think about his name.' Fox thought. Krystal's reply came quickly, though she was still talking to Tom. 'Leave me alone.' Fox grinned inwardly. 'To be alone with your new boyfriend?' Then Krystal shot him a warning look that Tom didn't understand, and turned back and kept chattering. Tom gave Fox a confused look out of the corner of his eye. Fox sighed and went into the Great Fox to take a nap.  
  
Fox was tired and drowsy, so he accidentally bumped into Peppy's room. Since he never let Fox in there, Fox was inclined to see what books or information Peppy was keeping from him. His sleepiness vanishing in an instant, Fox opened Peppy's bookcase and looked around.  
  
Fox idly looked at the titles of each book. The books were mainly about life and biographies, but a few were unlabeled, and among them, Fox came over his father's diary.  
  
Fox's heart raced as he picked it from the shelf. It was quite thick and dusty, and Fox coughed lightly as he opened it up. Printed in the lined spaces, was James McCloud's neat handwriting.  
  
As if told by an unseen force, Fox flipped to a page near the center of the book. It was a long entry, and James was clearing telling a story. Fox read in his head, trying to tell Krystal at the same time.  
  
'Among my late father's possessions that he left me, I found an ornament box decorated with strange runes. Upon my opening of it, I found the single most powerful gem ever created. It is called the Ruby of Blood. With it, I have been able to face the most terrifying of creatures. This gem somehow gives me renewed honor and vim. I am able to run faster than Peppy and longer than Pigma could eat. This is the reason I chose to take on the mission General Pepper has assigned me - to kill Andross. Normally, this would seem like an impossible task, but the gem gives me hope. Wish me luck, journal, as I now speed along the stars in the Great Fox.'  
  
Krystal, obviously heard Fox's thinking, replied excitedly. 'Your father had the Ruby of Blood? There is another of this kind of stone? If there is, and this Ruby has powers, shouldn't the Emerald possess some kind of power as well?' Fox thought for a moment. 'It does! I didn't die after my fall. It must be some kind of healing gem.'  
  
"Fox!" Peppy exclaimed. Fox jumped three feet into the air.  
  
"Sorry, Peppy, I couldn't help myself," Fox said, quickly trying to shove the book back.  
  
"I see you've found James' diary," Peppy said, not sounding the least bit angry, but more depressed, "There are some things that I couldn't understand. It's best if you didn't read any more. James trusted me to keep it away from you, for reasons unknown." Peppy took the book from Fox's paws and put it back into the bookcase. Sighing deeply, Peppy put his paw on Fox's shoulder and told him to come down to the hanger. Fox thought Peppy seemed more confused than he did.  
  
**  
  
"You've got mail," Rob said in his robotic voice as he handed Peppy a letter sealed with the Cornerian crest. Fox raised his eyebrows at Peppy. Now that he had drunk one of Slippy's special cappuccinos, he felt a lot better and more energized. Fox wondered for a second what Slippy makes those things out of.  
  
"Oh, how nice," Peppy said as he read the letter, "General Pepper has asked all Cornerian pilots, commanders, and soldiers to attend his 'Ball of Celebration'."  
  
"Hmm?" Krystal was sitting, squished, beside Fox and Tom on the bench, trying to get warm in the winter night, "We used to play with large sacks filled with feathers back in my home world, but aren't you guys too old for that?" Everyone chuckled.  
  
"No, a dance ball," Peppy said, "The kind where animals dance with each other."  
  
"So when do we go?" Tom asked as he squirmed a bit to his right to stop Krystal's constant rubbing.  
  
"Tomorrow," Peppy said, "I just hope that tux of yours didn't get rotted after all these years, Fox."  
  
**  
  
Fox didn't feel like wearing a tuxedo, so he settled for a smart cloth jacket and a white shirt, cuffed neatly, and pants, with the Emerald tucked safely beneath it. He was still waiting for the others to get dressed as he hailed the van that was supposed to take them to the capital.  
  
"I. Hate. These. Trousers." Slippy grunted as he hopped dumbly across the road to the van. He was wearing black, in the almost same outfit as Fox, but with trousers three sizes too small for him to wear. Peppy and Tom came a few seconds later, in jackets similar to Fox's.  
  
'Hey, Krystal. We're waiting,' Fox thought. For a second, Fox felt Krystal's impatience. 'Why the heck do I have to wear this thing?' Krystal herself flopped out of the Great Fox a moment later, in a beautiful pale green dress. Her Emerald copy was out on her chest, and the glowing of it seemed to match the dress perfectly.  
  
Tom extended a white paw to her and she took it, hopping onto the van. The van turned out to be roomier than Fox had thought, and the seats were soft. Fox curiously examined the remote back massager button on his seat and pressed a few buttons experimentally. He heard Krystal, who was seated behind him, do the same.  
  
The driver took off at a very high speed, and the hover van bumped softy on the hills and small rocks of the grassy countryside. Before Fox knew it, they had arrived. He heard Krystal utter an impressed 'hmm' as they stepped out of the van.  
  
The building was a huge white mansion. It had stone pillars and small lights illuminating the doorways and windows. It had three stories, and the mahogany door was in the center of the building, led by small stone stairs.  
  
"I wonder if there's full buffet," Fox whispered to Slippy.  
  
"I wonder if they serve flies on ketchup," Slippy whispered back. A guard greeted Fox and his team by the door to let them in after scanning their bones with a black device. It's just to make sure you're you. Fox thought to Krystal as she knocked back the guard's scanner for the fifth time. Krystal hesitated before her sixth hit and lowered her paw. The guard let out a sigh and waved it around her head. After checking Tom, the guard, apparently still shaken, opened the door.  
  
The inside of the room was just as magnificent as the outside. Blue and red tapestries hung from the ceiling, which was pretty high, and the walls were painted golden yellow. The staircases were also carved out of mahogany, as so were the tables.  
  
General Pepper gave them a friendly greeting after being introduced to Krystal and Tom, and hurried off to greet the ambassador to some other planet far away. Bill also caught up with Fox, and after a few well-chosen comments about how Fox stole Tom, Bill also ran off after a cute female Labrador, his tail wagging furiously.  
  
Slippy ran off for the buffet line and Peppy wanted to meet the rabbits from MacBeth. Krystal, upon hearing the music, dragged Tom off to dance. Fox left with no one to hang out with, raced for the buffet line after Slippy.  
  
"Any flies, Slip?" Fox nudged Slippy as they grabbed forks and plates. Slippy shook his head.  
  
"They don't like to eat insects, those specieists. They've got some great algae pie, though," Slippy grabbed a chunk of the dark green pie and dropped it carelessly on his plate. Fox made a face and went off for the fish.  
  
There were some breeds Fox never heard of before. There was some kind of trout with golden eyes and another fish with the meanest teeth Fox had ever seen. The tank was labeled 'Burbot from Aquas'. Fox, remembering his encounter with marine life, lost his appetite and went to the dance floor instead, after giving his empty plate and fork to a disgruntled hedgehog butler.  
  
'Having fun, Krystal?' Fox asked. 'The time of my life! Tom is the best dancer I've ever met! Come look.' Fox, just then searching for Krystal, felt his mind leave his body in a flash of white. He suddenly appeared holding Tom. Fox tried to scream, but his mouth wasn't moving. Just then, he saw his paw. It was bright blue. He had just entered the mind of Krystal.  
  
The orchestra at one side of the floor struck up a waltz, and Tom began to dance faster. Fox felt him, or Krystal, give out a giggle. In another flash and a whoosh, Fox found himself with orange paws with gloves again. He tripped in mid-step to find something else to do when he started walking. He wasn't in the same posture as before, as he realized taking his left foot that was already in front to move front, he wasn't Krystal anymore. He gave out a sigh and went off for the buffet line, finding his appetite again.  
  
Suddenly, the dog next to Fox fell down to the floor with a thud. He was still twitching, and Fox was just about to call for help when he noticed everyone else was doing the same thing. The animals were dropping like dead flies, and soon there wasn't a single person standing upright, except Fox, Krystal, and Tom.  
  
"What's going on?" Fox ran over to them.  
  
"It must be the food," Tom said, "We didn't eat anything, and you didn't either, did you?" Fox shook his head. Krystal opened her mouth to say something, but a huge crashing sound came from the ceiling. The rumbling shook all three foxes over.  
  
"Fox McCloud," an evil and deep voice said. Fox recognized it instantly. Pulling out his gun and sitting up, he aimed it at the speaker.  
  
Andross, probably another clone, was standing beside a massive ship, which had luckily landed itself on the buffet tables, leaving everyone uninjured, but still unconscious. Fox, his anger bubbling, pulled the trigger of his gun. The red rays bounced harmlessly off of the invisible shield that Andross was wearing.  
  
"Ha, ha, ha," Andross laughed maniacally at Fox, "Hmm, just my luck. Three foxes standing in a row. Two bearing the stones I want." Andross reached for his gun, which was a lot bigger than Fox's, and began shooting at him. Dodging carefully out of the way, Fox grabbed Tom and Krystal's arms and pulled them away from the evil albino gorilla. Andross somehow grew bigger by the second, until he was as tall as the ceiling. He reached out with a hand and with his fingernails, managed to pinch onto Krystal's necklace. He pulled hard and Krystal was dragged from the floor, the magic of the necklace holding on. Fox thought just for a moment that he saw a red gem on Andross' neck.  
  
"Get OFF!" Andross furiously shook Krystal by the necklace, until the magic broke and Krystal was thrown to the ground and knocked out. Andross growled as he looked at it. His growl grew louder as he clenched his fist on it, crushing the Emerald copy to bits. Andross scrambled to reach for Fox and Tom, but in the midst of his rage, he tripped and crushed the shield generator on his belt.  
  
Fox, seeing his chance, took out his gun and motioned Tom to do the same. They started shooting wildly, and Fox was surprised at how Tom's aim matched his. They both hit Andross in the face a couple to times. Andross, howling in pain, shrunk back and ran to his ship. A moment later, it took off. Andross' voice was magnified as he took off back into space.  
  
"This won't be the last time, Fox! I'll get the Emerald, and I'll snatch the Sapphire of Skies, too, when I have the chance!" Andross shouted. His ship disappeared from view from the hole in the ceiling. Fox looked at Tom.  
  
"The Sapphire? You have a, er, the Sapphire?" Fox asked in amazement. Tom nodded bleakly. Fox took a better look at the gem on Tom's chain. Indeed, it was as blue as the sky and just in the right size and shape as the Emerald. Fox looked back at Tom, "What does it do?"  
  
"'Dunno. My dad gave it to me for a Christmas present," Tom fiddled idly with the chain, "You should make sure that no one's dead, Fox." Fox nodded.  
  
Everyone was asleep and snoring lightly, except General Pepper, who was causing an earthquake with his nasal congestion problems. They didn't seem that they would wake up anytime soon, so Fox concerned himself with Krystal's injury. She had been knocked against the wall pretty hard, and there was a large swell that was bleeding. After a few "Wake up" calls and a glass of water to the face, she spluttered to life again.  
  
"Is that ugly monkey gone?" Krystal asked as soon as she stopped coughing. Fox and Tom nodded. Fox told her the whole story in her mind, as his tongue wasn't working too well.  
  
"Tom is one of us?" Krystal exclaimed, "Who would've thought our luck would've been this good?"  
  
"Or that bad," Fox murmured, "Andross is back, and I'm expecting another war." Tom nodded solemnly.  
  
"We should round up all the pilots after they're woken up. We should head for Venom straight away," Tom said. Fox shook his head.  
  
"We should tell all the residents of Corneria to evacuate, then we will look for Andross' base. How are you so sure its on Venom?" Krystal asked. Tom shrugged. Fox sighed and went to work splashing water on everyone's faces.  
  
**  
  
"Hey, Fox, I've made an extra Arwing for Krystal," Slippy waved his wrench proudly.  
  
"Huh? She doesn't even know how to fly properly," Fox said. Slippy picked up a manual on his desk and waved it at Krystal, signaling her to read the whole thing.  
  
Fox and his team were back at the hanger. General Pepper, once again, had given them the pleasure of kicking Andross' butt. He ordered Bill's team and some other pilots to scour the planets looking for Andross or his bases.  
  
Slippy had made phenomenal preparations. He made bunk beds for Fox and Tom, and Peppy and himself. He, as the gentlemen-ish guy he was, gave his cabin to Krystal. He also, with the help of Rob and a few other volunteer engineers, re-built the Blue Marine and another Landmaster.  
  
Their deadline to set of was in a matter of hours. Tom scrambled to load his and the others' possessions; Krystal was busy learning to fly; Peppy was busy shopping for supplies; Slippy was painting the two new Arwings and the new Landmaster; and Fox was busy helping everyone with their jobs.  
  
"Fox, help me with the food!" Peppy stumbled into the hanger with his arms and two hover carts full of canned food. Fox hurried to take the supplies and dumped them on the Great Fox.  
  
"Fox, gimme a hand with the luggage!" Tom grunted as he shoved four suitcases at a time. Fox rushed over and took two of the bags and dropped them off in the cabins.  
  
"Fox, I can't work the crane properly!" Slippy cried as he accidentally banged the new Landmaster against the wall. Fox jumped onto the crane and slowly lowered the tank into the vehicle bay.  
  
'Fox, what does the G-Diffuser do?' Krystal asked timidly. 'It creates an electromagnetic field around the Arwing so it doesn't drop out of the air for reasons of bumping or crashing into small objects.' Fox answered as he tried to jump off of the crane. He tripped over his own feet and bonked his head on the Great Fox and fell asleep.  
  
**  
  
A/N: Don't mind me. I know it's not done. And yes, to those of you out there that hate it, it sucks. I'm gonna work on the next one soon, so, like I said, don't hound by butt. 


	2. The war is brewing

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in Starfox 64 or Starfox Adventures. If I did, I'd be stinking rich and I wouldn't write this. A big sorry to Zoe2000 for kinda stealing her idea about an Arctic Fox. I really had no idea she had one in her stories, too. I only noticed after I was halfway through my story. The same to Foxmerc on the Alben/Aldon thing. Jeez, great minds think alike, eh?  
  
Intro: Okay, setting. One year after the Dinosaur Planet incident. On Corneria, I guess. This is based on the N64/Gamecube setting, which means: Fox and his team are broke, Fox never met Fara, and General Pepper is not obsessed with suckers (haha). I never finished the game; heck, I don't even have the game; so don't hound my butt for stuff like 'hey, Fox didn't do that' blah, blah, blah. Gimme a break wills ya? But I'd appreciate it if you would send me a formal e-mail about it, and then I would change or update my story about that.  
  
Okay, now on with the darn story.  
  
  
  
"Oh, why me?" Fox grumbled as he sat up in his bed, rubbing his new swell. Fox tried to stand, but he hit his head again on the small, metal ladder of the bunks. Tom chuckled from the top bunk. Fox distinctly heard him say 'clumsy oaf'.  
  
Fox muttered some curses about his luck and got his helmet and gloves. Shoving them on after a few frustrated groans because he put the gloves on the wrong paws, Fox stumbled toward the cockpit.  
  
"Finally awake?" Rob asked. Fox looked out of the window and saw stars. They had taken off without him.  
  
"Yeah," Fox yawned, "Where's everyone else?"  
  
"The kitchen," Rob said.  
  
"Thanks," Fox said. He was just about to walk off when Rob started to flash his bulbs and swing his arms around wildly.  
  
"Danger, Fox McCloud! Danger," Rob shouted. Fox was just about to turn around and say something when Rob started laughing, "Ha, ha, ha. That was my first joke." Fox chuckled sarcastically and shuffled off.  
  
Everyone greeted Fox warmly and made jokes about his head. Fox noticed Slippy had nailed down two more chairs for Tom and Krystal. Tom was sipping a cappuccino with a can of tuna (everyone just loves tuna) beside him and Krystal was chewing slowly on tuna (see author's note above).  
  
Fox, as he sat down and poured himself some coffee, thought about how Krystal seemed different than he had expected. She was casual with everybody, instead of being all princess-y like she was supposed to be. Krystal must've read his thoughts again because she raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
"Bill updated us thirty minutes before you woke up, Fox," Peppy informed him, "It seems that all the planets are clean, but Venom's bases shot down four of his pilots." Fox gave a murmur of acknowledgement.  
  
"We're going there?" Fox asked. Slippy nodded, eating his usual supply of flies, cleverly concealed within a small, opaque jar to prevent the guests from getting disgusted.  
  
"I'm not surprised Andross picked this time," Peppy said suddenly, "For the next two months, Venom is aligned almost perfectly with Corneria, Katina, and Solar, which means a direct attack, after taking over our frontal base." Slippy and Krystal nodded knowingly, but Tom and Fox gave Peppy quizzical looks.  
  
"So our homeland, our base, and our enemy are in direct contact?" Fox asked, amazed. Peppy nodded energetically. Tom shrugged.  
  
"It makph 'tacking a lot eafier," he said through a mouthful of food, "For uf and for fem."  
  
"Yo da-lolly," Fox said nonchalantly, "Where're we going, anyway?"  
  
"Katina, of course," Slippy said.  
  
"Through Meteo?"  
  
"That's the fastest way," Slippy said. Fox gulped down the remainder of his coffee and stood up.  
  
"I'd better blast those asteroids out of you way, then," Fox stumbled off, with Tom and Krystal behind him.  
  
**  
  
"Why'd ya bring that thing?" Fox asked, pointing at her staff, which was strapped with a piece of leather to Krystal's back.  
  
"I can create a bubble of air just in case I get blown into outer space."  
  
"Can you create a force field for the Great Fox?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Darn, that makes things a lot harder."  
  
"You're too lazy, Fox."  
  
"Eh, whatever," Fox climbed into his Arwing. The other foxes did the same.  
  
A flash of white flickered on each of their tail engines when they started up. The liquid oxygen, the best fuel there was for a space ship, burned brightly, blinding Fox for a second as it blew up, sending Fox at Mach 2 right out of the hatch. A whir and a whoosh later, the three were blasted into space.  
  
Fox could barely make out shapes of asteroids in the distance. Solar was visible, and Katina was across the field. Venom, green as nasty as it always was, was looming over Katina like a ghost.  
  
'Hmm, this seat feels way more comfortable than the other one that I was in.' Krystal thought. Fox snorted. 'Just blast the darn rocks up ahead.' Without warning, Krystal started firing straightforward. Since Fox was in front of her, he panicked and swung to the right, braking and coming up beside Krystal.  
  
"Jeez! Not at me!" Fox yelled over the radio. Fox's screen fizzed and Krystal came in.  
  
"Relax, I wasn't about to hit you."  
  
"I wouldn't count on it," Fox said, "You shoot like a maniac. The screen split and Tom's voice came over, too. He was laughing real hard.  
  
"No kidding! She knocked a quarter of my shield out," Tom laughed harder.  
  
"Ah, shut up, you jackal," Krystal's side fizzed again and it went blank.  
  
"Well, anyway, ETA: thirty minutes," Tom waved and he was gone, too. Fox boosted ahead and shot a single laser at a faraway rock. The laser hit bulls eye and the rock shattered into three pieces.  
  
"Ooo, let me try," Krystal shot repeatedly forward. Fox panicked again, banking to the right just in time to avoid her deadly blows.  
  
"Stop it!" Fox screamed. Tom started laughing again. He started shooting, too, but his aims were ten times better. He blasted away one of Fox's rock shards and blew away three more. Krystal gave out a 'humph' of anger and boosted farther than Fox, then started shooting again. Her wild shots bounced off a large asteroid and reflected back to Fox and clipped him on the left wing. The damage was minor, but now Fox was fuming.  
  
"Gah! STOP IT!" Fox shot a rock nearby Krystal and the shards flew in her direction, barely missing her. The screen fizzed again, and Tom was howling with laughter.  
  
"Maniacs, both of you."  
  
The next few minutes went without much more action, just small pieces here and there, and Krystal was refusing to fire anymore. Just as the rocks cleared, Tom's voice came over the radio, but more hurried.  
  
"Bogeys at six o'clock!"  
  
"How many?" Fox demanded.  
  
"Dunno, but about three hundred."  
  
"Hold your fire, Fox!" Fox's screen fizzed again and Bill's gray-furred face came into view, "You aren't about to shoot an old friend, are you?"  
  
"Oh, hi, Captain Grey," Tom said.  
  
"Good afternoon, Thomas. A-hmm, anyway, Fox, I'm with Colonel Alben and her crew."  
  
"Oh, that Labrador you were talking to yesterday? Gotta thing for her, Bill?" Fox chuckled. His screen fizzed and a dog with a mock-mean look on her face came over.  
  
"Really, now, Commander McCloud? Why don't I just shoot you out of the sky for the darn, prejudiced, busybody vulpine that you are?" Colonel Alben said. Fox chuckled.  
  
"I can see why you've taken an interest in her."  
  
"Ah, shut yer yap, you pathetic, orange-butted excuse for a furry," Colonel Alben snapped.  
  
"Ooo, feisty one."  
  
"I thought I told you to shut up!" All the pilots present chuckled.  
  
"ETA to Katina, ten minutes," Tom said, still snickering.  
  
"I can see the runway up ahead," Slippy said, braking slightly, his front engines burning for a bit. The other three hundred and three fighters did the same. The fighter jets hit the atmosphere, and Fox could see the white silicon on his Arwing heating up, turning a bright red. That was normal, besides, silicon doesn't melt unless at 6,000 degrees Celsius.  
  
A wide cement runway materialized before Fox. Yellow markers and white lines dotted the field. Fox slowly brought his Arwing's nose up a little, flipped over his landing gear, and bumped into the road with a small thunk. His tires screeched in sync with the others as rubber flew everywhere. Fox skid to a halt somewhere near the base. The hydraulic doors off all the ships hissed and fumed as the pilots jumped out.  
  
'Nice place,' Krystal thought sarcastically as she hopped over to Fox and Tom. Fox knew what she meant. The entire planet was a brown desert. Just brown dirt and nothing else. There wasn't even a rock. There was a base and a large runway. Not much to look at.  
  
There was a gigantic thud as the Great Fox landed somewhere over the base. Even from three miles away, Fox could hear Peppy's angry yells. Frankly, that was the reason Fox never let Slippy drive; bad eyesight and no common sense to flip over the wheels.  
  
The pilots all took off their helmets and went inside the base. The base was renovated since the last time Fox was there. They painted the inside a bright blue, making it very hard to spot Krystal in the fray, even with her gray shirt and pants. Fox and his crew planned to sleep inside the Great Fox, but Bill and Colonel Alben would have a hard time finding proper sleeping cabins for three hundred some pilots. The base was already cramped, since there were already a few hundred infantries inside the base.  
  
The pilots all reported to the main console room, where General Pepper and other officers droned on for three hours about his attack plans. General Pepper, who was on a screen, told every soldier at the end of his briefing to have a gun handy in case Andross decides to attack anytime soon. Fox, Tom, Peppy, and Slippy all had a laser strapped to their belts, but Krystal was yet to have one. Bill gave her a new model of the small pistols and showed her how to use the safety (thank God).  
  
"Just pull the trigger," Bill said at last. Krystal gave him a sarcastic look and tucked it into her pocket. 'I, for one, don't trust you with any lethal weapon.' Fox thought. Krystal's reply was slow in coming, as if she was thinking for the right thing to think. 'I'm not a trigger-happy son of an ape like these guys.' Krystal nodded her head in the infantry's direction. Fox chuckled and Bill gave him a strange look.  
  
**  
  
'I remember the last time I saw a gun.' Krystal thought. Fox and Krystal sat on Fox's bottom bunk bed, having a conversation. It was about the war. 'It was when my parents were killed.' Fox gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. Krystal looked down. 'Do you want to see?' Fox, confused, gave a nod out of instinct. Quickly, Krystal used her paw to get a firm grasp on Fox's head. Fox normally would've thought that was strange, but strange was a different word when Krystal was around.  
  
Fox felt a surge of energy flowing from Krystal's hand to his brain. Fox felt a flash of white, but his eyes stayed open. He felt that sucking feeling again, and in a split-second, he was in Krystal's mind yet again.  
  
Fox was a phantom in her world, like he always were when he entered her memories or her eyes. He found himself in a dense jungle, in front of a rudely built house made of clay and stone with a straw roof. A bright blue vixen was sitting on a table outside with a dark blue fox.  
  
A small vixen, no older than three years old, hopped out of the house and started to talk to her parents in a strange language. The little vixen had tattoos on her arms and forelegs and she was wearing the Emerald copy around her neck. She was also carrying a staff. It was Krystal as a child.  
  
Krystal's parents nodded and Krystal skipped off into the woods and started picking berries just beside Fox. Little Krystal was wearing a bright white tunic. She had bracelets way too big for her and a tiara, just like the Krystal that was with Fox in the real world. Her hair was longer, tied back in a small bun with a golden pin in it. Her little blue eyes shined in the bright sunlight as she sampled one of the yellowish berries that she was picking and stuffing into her pockets.  
  
Suddenly, a great big vessel appeared in the sky and sped towards the little hut. It landed a few feet away from it. Krystal's parents jumped up in surprise and started shouting. Little Krystal jumped behind the bush of yellow berries and hid. Fox watched with interest as three figures jumped out of the ship.  
  
"Wolf!" Fox shouted. But it wasn't Wolf O'Donnel. It must've been a close relative because the wolf that jumped out had the same color of fur as Wolf, but with a different outfit. He was wearing black leather, but he didn't have the eyepatch. The wolf pulled out a laser, and before Krystal or Fox could say anything, he shot two lasers into each of Krystal's parents.  
  
The wolf, apparently satisfied when he saw Krystal's parent's blood splatter all over the table, motioned to his cronies, a lizard and a lynx, and went inside the hut.  
  
Little Krystal gasped, but she regained herself and ran towards the ship. Fox flew after her. Krystal ran towards the cockpit and started pressing buttons wildly. Fox gave out a scream that no one could hear when the engine started and blasted the ship towards outer space.  
  
Fox was flung back a few feet, but went and sat down on a chair, but fell right through it. Taking a last look at little Krystal as he felt the sucking feeling again, he saw silent tears running down her cheek.  
  
**  
  
"Gah!" Fox landed on his bed. Krystal looked over at him.  
  
"Now you know," she said simply.  
  
"My God! That evil, vile."  
  
"I know," Krystal sat down again. Fox heaved himself up and sat down beside her again.  
  
"How did you get out like that? You were only a little kit!"  
  
"Pure luck," Krystal sighed. Fox could see tears threatening to break out from her eyes. Fox put his gloved paw on her shoulder.  
  
"That wolf. He looked familiar," Fox said. Krystal gave a 'hmm'.  
  
"He was one of Andross's guys, I know now. He was definitely looking for the Emerald."  
  
"Wanna hear one of my stories about a wolf? It'll make you feel better," Fox offered. Krystal nodded. She placed her paw back on Fox's forehead and she was sucked into his memories this time.  
  
**  
  
Fox was sitting idly on a stone bench, yawning into the night. This was his first mission, and a part of his training. At age fifteen, he was bold and adventurous, and he hadn't killed anyone yet.  
  
He was sitting before a stone building, the same one that Andross attacked. At this time, there wasn't a gate, and hills and trees surrounded the place. Little dark shapes that were benches dotted the landscape. Fox was assigned to serve as a watchman for the ambassadors who were coming from a distant star. He was with a dozen other classmates and among them, Bill Grey the Husky, who was still lance corporal at the time.  
  
Fox yawned again, and lazily shifted his position. Looking at the beautiful, cloudless night and the bright moons above, Fox dozed off for a second. As he closed his eyes, he thought he saw a dark figure creeping across the hills and among the trees. Fox bolted upright and looked again. He didn't see anything this time.  
  
"Bill, cover me," Fox said, meaning for Bill to tell whatever high ranking officer who asked where Fox was that he was in the bathroom or something. Bill nodded sleepily. Fox said quiet thanks and ran off towards the hills where Fox thought he saw the figure.  
  
There wasn't anyone in sight, so Fox yawned again and decided to take a walk in the woods. Stretching lazily, Fox flopped silently around. A sound brought him right back to life.  
  
'Whir.' the unmistakable sound of a sniper rifle powering up reached Fox's sensitive ears. Running quietly towards the sound, Fox noticed a bump in the ground ahead of him. There was a tiny clearing with few trees, and a window from the mansion was clearly visible. Fox noticed the figure just before he fired and Fox kicked him quickly. The silenced shot went off target and bounced off the wall.  
  
"Ah!" Fox screamed as the figure charged at him and locked its sharp claws around his neck. It was a wolf, a dark gray one to be exact. Fox brought his knee up and kicked the wolf hard in the stomach. He reeled back, giving Fox just enough time to draw his gun. The wolf did the same, and was just about to pull the trigger when.  
  
"Fox! WOLF!" Bill crashed through the trees. The wolf turned his head slightly to Fox's right, and that was his worst mistake. Fox pulled the trigger and an angry buzz was audible throughout the field.  
  
The shot would've pierced the wolf's skull, but he flung himself backward at just the right time. Instead of hitting him in the cranium, the shot was just at the right angle to pierce his right eye and come out of his nose bone. Blood flowed freely from the rich blood vessels of the eye and nose.  
  
The wolf let out a scream and a curse, shot one shot, that barely missed by an inch, at Fox and scrambled away into the darkness.  
  
**  
  
"Tsk, you got lucky too, heh?" Krystal put her paw away. Fox nodded.  
  
"That was Wolf O'Donnel. No wonder he keeps trying to shoot me down during our dogfights," Fox mumbled, "He never wins, anyway. Poor guy."  
  
"Ha!" Krystal uttered a menacing growl, "Poor? Those darn villains." She pounded her fist on the bed.  
  
"Uh, right," Fox edged away from her, "Wanna go flying again?"  
  
"Sure," Krystal stood up and followed Fox down the hall.  
  
**  
  
"Ah!" Krystal yelled as she sped across the skies, "Too. Fast."  
  
"Don't worry, you're not likely to crash," Fox said, "G-13. Way to fly."  
  
"I think my bones. Are getting crushed," Krystal gasped as her Arwing reached Mach 3. Fox followed her easily. Fox could reach Mach 5, but the force could kill him, especially with the leather seats instead of the fake fur ones that Bill's pilots had.  
  
"Don't be silly. You probably didn't turn on the G-Diffuser," Fox laughed. Krystal, who showed on Fox's screen, flipped a switch, and she heaved out a breath.  
  
"Remind me to do that next time," Krystal said as she puffed out carbon dioxide. She gave another boost and sped away from Fox.  
  
'Think you can beat me? Think again!' Fox boosted after her, the excess of the liquid oxygen trailing behind him.  
  
"Mach 4!" Krystal yelled.  
  
"Oh yeah? Mach 4 and a half! Um, if there was such a thing." Fox suddenly zoomed right past Krystal and over some hills of dirt.  
  
"Huh! Mach 5!" Krystal was now nose to nose with Fox, flying a such a velocity that they could almost go around the whole planet in a matter of minutes.  
  
"I. Can't. Breathe!" Krystal puffed at Fox.  
  
"Ok, slow down. You beat me," Fox put on the brake and he was thrown forward a little. Krystal did the same.  
  
"YEE-HAW!" Bill suddenly appeared out of nowhere and launched right past the two foxes.  
  
"Jeez! Slow down!" Fox yelled.  
  
"AAAAAA!" Tom sped right after him; his after wind catching Fox and flinging him a few feet to the left. Fox heard Krystal mumble 'boys'.  
  
Fox banked sharply to his right and sped towards the base, with Krystal on his tail. Smiling slightly, Fox braked quickly, making Krystal yell in fright and turn to the left. Catching on the object of the game, she slowed and bumped Fox's Arwing softly, making the shields sizzle for a bit. They played the crashing game for a few minutes before the reached the base again.  
  
Fox bumped softly on the cement ground and he powered down his ship. Krystal, still inexperienced, literally crashed down to the ground with such force that the runway cracked.  
  
Fox jumped down, catching his laces as he fell and bumped his hip on the ground. The effects of going mach-speed are varied, but usually it causes nausea or temporary forgetfulness.  
  
"Darn it." Krystal mumbled as she stumbled along after Fox, "So. Dizzy. Fox? What's my name again?"  
  
"Uh, dunno. Captain Houndtooth?"  
  
"Right."  
  
**  
  
'Boop? Blurble. Gurgle. Puh-tooie.' Fox spat out the water and dipped his head again in the sink. 'Oh, darn it! Shouldn't have flown that fast.'  
  
"Hi, Fox, do you mind? Everywhere in the base is full," Krystal flopped carelessly into the bathroom and turned on the tap on the second sink.  
  
"Glurp. O, Oi doant moind," Fox said with his head still in the water. Krystal muttered thanks and dipped her head in the water, too.  
  
"Are oo 'til. Er." 'I mean, are you still going out with Tom?'  
  
'Erm, no. He wasn't very interested in courting when I asked him.'  
  
'Oh, too bad.'  
  
'It's ok. We haven't begun mating yet.'  
  
"Bloop." Fox spluttered and splashed in the water. He finally regained use of his neck and flung his head out, "What?"  
  
"What 'what'?" Krystal raised her head, too.  
  
"Did you say mating?" Fox coughed through a lung full of water.  
  
"Yeah. So what? That's what I'm supposed to do, right? I am the last of my kind," Krystal said this and dunked her head in the water again.  
  
'Uh, whatever you say.' Fox dried himself with a towel and walked out. Jumping off the Great Fox, he walked towards the base, hoping that Bill was back from his race.  
  
Kicking open the door to the cafeteria, Fox began prowling through the tables, looking for his thick-furred friend. Fox spotted a husky sitting in a table beside the windows.  
  
"Hello, Bill."  
  
"Hmm? Who are you?" Bill looked up good-naturedly. His head wobbled a bit while he was talking, and he had spread peanut butter on his milk carton.  
  
"Snap out of it!" Fox reached for Bill's small glass of water and flung it at his face. Bill banged his fist on the table as he sneezed it out of his snout.  
  
"Hey, watch it!" Bill shook himself like a wet dog. Uh, right. Fox gave himself a little shake as he just realized what he had thought.  
  
"Back to the ground now?"  
  
"Oh, hiya, Fox. Where'd you come from?" Fox groaned. Bill cleared his throat, "Never mind."  
  
"When did you make captain, Bill?" Fox asked as he sat down across from his friend.  
  
"Three months ago, I think. I got a medal and a promotion after getting shot from the sky by my own teammate." Fox raised an eyebrow. Bill shrugged, "Doesn't matter how I get it, right? As long as I got it." Fox nodded as he heard the phrase his father always said.  
  
"All pilots report to the fields immediately! We are under attack! I repeat: We are under attack!" The intercom shouted. Fox scrambled to get up and sprinted out the door, squeezing his way down the hall with a hundred others.  
  
If someone were watching up in the skies, they would've sworn there were ants swarming out of the building. Fox, being the fastest runner of the lot, did a flying jump and landed squarely in the Arwing. Kicking the engine to life, an explosion rocked Fox's ears as he remembered to close the cockpit.  
  
"All units report," Bill shouted over the radio. Then, there was a string of pilots reporting in, and among them, Fox could hear Krystal and Tom. Flying fast and checking his radar, Fox saw hundreds of jets swarming behind him, and another few hundred swarming toward him in the opposite direction.  
  
"Break formation and engage," Colonel Alben cried. The group split and banked off in different directions, boosting to catch up with Fox. Fox powered up his lock-on lasers and fired towards any ship that dared to come too close.  
  
Jets were screaming across the skies as the two groups clashed. One being the yellow and brown marked Venomian jets; the others were the blue and green of Bill and Colonel Alben's pilots. A whole hour passed and Fox wasn't being shot at, but he was doing the shooting, blasting down over twenty of them, but he also accidentally shot Tom once and hit another jet from Colonel Alben's fleet.  
  
"Holy-" Bill yelled as a plane barely missed him. Lasers flew all over the place, with Krystal shooting wildly, occasionally catching a bad guy in the engine or wing and sending them right into the ground below.  
  
Fox tailed an officer and shot, his accuracy beating everyone in the battlefield, but jets were dropping like flies, enemies and allies alike being shot down. A bogey tailed Fox and clipped him in the wing. Fox did an easy somersault and shot the bogey down with a simple homing laser.  
  
"Status report, computer," Fox demanded as he shot another plane down.  
  
"Shields at 98 per cent. Engines at 100 per cent."  
  
"Not that! The battlefield!"  
  
"212 Venomian crafts. 158 Cornerian crafts."  
  
"Damn it!" Bill shouted, "We're outnumbered!" Fox banked steeply to avoid an Arwing, probably Krystal.  
  
"Send in the infantry, General!" Colonel Alben said, tapping her screen. Just as she finished her request, fifty tanks roared out of the base, with Slippy and Peppy in the lead, manning Landmasters. They shot into the sky, sending SAM's and other missiles into the fray. Fox narrowly collided with a torpedo, frankly from the Blue Marine.  
  
"What the heck-" Fox dived just in time as it whistled dangerously by, "Slippy, what in heaven's name was that?" Slippy clicked in. He shrugged and pressed another button, sending another torpedo flying.  
  
"We have plenty."  
  
Now the yellow jets where being exploded and falling from the skies. A cheer went up from the Cornerians as the fleet of enemies retreated back into outer space. Fox puffed a breath and did a smooth U-turn, coming back to the base.  
  
"All units report," Bill commanded, out of breath. Fox noticed that this list was a lot shorter than the last one.  
  
"I'll show ya whose boss!" Krystal soared over to the retreating fighter jets and started firing again. Fox turned his head to see what she was doing. The Venomian fleet broke lines and scattered at the sight of Krystal, but one turned right back at her and launched a bomb.  
  
"Krystal!" Fox screamed in horror as her Arwing was hit and exploded in a fiery ball of death, the remnants of her jet pummeling to the earth. A great boom was heard as she crashed to the ground. An ambulance crew rushed toward the wreckage and poured carbon dioxide on the burning metal scraps.  
  
Fox and the other pilots bumped to the ground, opening the cockpits. Engineers rushed in to do repairs and maintenance on smoking planes. Fox tripped over his laces again and tumbled over his Arwing while he was boarding down, but running quickly over to the hover car that was turning over the pieces.  
  
"Hey, HEY!" Fox shoved a raccoon over who was pushing him back. He ran over to a stretcher. Fox froze in terror.  
  
"Fox?" Krystal asked weakly. Her body was finished. She had burns all over her and there was a deep gash across her chest. The blood from her wounds stained the stretcher, but what was most frightening of it all was her right arm: her paw was ripped off.  
  
"My God!" Fox searched for her pulse, but the signal was too weak to detect on her right wrist. Fox silently slipped the Emerald of Earth onto her neck when nobody was looking. Krystal suddenly stopped breathing.  
  
"Leave her, Mr. McCloud!" The raccoon doctor pulled a stunned Fox off of the stretcher and told his nurses to carry Krystal to the hospital wing. The doctor rushed off after the hover car, leaving a petrified fox crumpled on the ground, sobbing.  
  
**  
  
"Hi," Krystal coughed as she sat up. Fox pushed her back down on the bed. Fox relaxed when he saw that she was still living and conscious.  
  
The infirmary had a strong smell of chlorine and medicine. The white ceramic walls and floors made the Great Fox look gray. Everything was whiter than the Great Fox. The sheets and the mattresses were a pure white that even would put a bright fox like Tom to shame. Even the patients were wearing such a bright white robe that Krystal almost glowed.  
  
There weren't many patients. Most of the pilots who have been shot down exploded with their aircraft. The only ones in the whole room besides the two foxes and the nurses were a unconscious squirrel without a tail and three other unrecognizable bodies who look like their fur was shaven off. Krystal was only in the infirmary for a day, but she looked fine in the outside.  
  
"What'd the doctor say?"  
  
"Oh, the usual," Krystal coughed again, "Three broken ribs, all four fractured limbs, internal bleeding, swollen hip, fractured hip, one collapsed lung, broken sternum, one ear gone, fractured spine, deep cut around the chest and stomach area, punctured stomach, first degree burns, half a tail, one blind eye, brain damage, compound bone damage to six areas, twisted wrist, cut esophagus, concussion, cut main artery, snapped veins, snapped hamstring, triceps, biceps, and neck muscles, and not to mention a missing paw." Fox raised an eyebrow. She looked way better than that. She didn't have the fractured limbs, because she was scratching herself with her left paw, and her burns were almost gone. Her tail looked normal, and so did her eye and ears. Her right paw had somehow re-grown, too, but the fur on it was much shorter than the other one.  
  
'You used the Emerald?'  
  
'Of course, or else I'd be dead by now.' Krystal groaned as she tried to shift her position to get a better look at Fox. 'The doctor said I'd be better in three years, but with the Emerald, well, come back tomorrow.' Fox breathed a sigh of relief. Krystal slipped the chain from her neck and waved it at Fox.  
  
'You keep it. You need to heal, remember? It belongs to you, anyway.'  
  
'It does?' Krystal thought as she shrugged and slipped it back on.  
  
"I'm going to get something to eat. Do you want anything?" Fox asked politely. Krystal shook her head and pointed to a tray beside her and made a face. Fox could tell that she couldn't stand applesauce, because she had tossed an open container of it against the wall. Fox patted her on the shoulder and left.  
  
Fox absent mindedly wandered over to the cafeteria again, and spotted Colonel Alben and Bill eating lunch at the same table that Fox splashed water on his friend. Fox grabbed a plate of steaming fish and sat down opposite Bill and the Colonel. Colonel Alben scowled.  
  
"Good afternoon, Commander McCloud," she said with a strict tone.  
  
"Hi."  
  
"What's the matter?"  
  
"I just wanna eat lunch."  
  
"Can't you eat somewhere else?"  
  
"Erm, no," Fox peered at the other tables. They were all full.  
  
"Chill, Alex, I don't think he's going to dump his fish on our faces," Bill nudged 'Alex' playfully.  
  
"Who's Alex?" Fox asked stupidly.  
  
"I'm Alex," Alex growled, "Alexandra Alben. Jeez."  
  
"Uh, right."  
  
"Well, this is turning out to be an intelligent conversation."  
  
"Sure," Fox shrugged and started to pick at the salmon with a fork.  
  
**  
  
"If Andross decides to attack again, we're done for," Peppy paced up and down the lounge of the Great Fox. Slippy nodded.  
  
"I don't think he has enough troops," Tom said hopefully.  
  
"He may have aid of foreign mercenaries."  
  
"Wait, aren't we mercenaries?" Krystal piped up. She was completely healed, and she decided on her luck to jump out of the sixth story window of the infirmary. The Emerald was the luckiest charm Fox could ever wish for, but he thought it was safer with a seasoned warrior who knew more about it.  
  
"Yeah, but that's not the."  
  
"We could ask for the foxes' help," Slippy interrupted. Tom raised an eyebrow. Fox started explaining about their adventures in the other solar system, leaving out the library part.  
  
"We can always assassinate Andross in his bed," Fox suggested.  
  
"After you defeat his elite guards," Peppy pointed out. Fox noticed Tom fiddling with his chain again.  
  
"If only you were invisible," Tom said, the Sapphire twirling between his fingers. Suddenly, there was a flash of blue and Tom was gone. Everyone panicked.  
  
"Hey, where'd ya go?" Fox groped blindly for the chair that Tom had sat on. Fox poked into something moist.  
  
"Ow, that's my nose!"  
  
"Huh? Who said that?" Peppy started groping around, too.  
  
"Hey! That's my ear!"  
  
"Tom? Tom!" Krystal suddenly appeared to grab onto some air.  
  
"OW, my lip!"  
  
"Tom! You are invisible!" Slippy squeaked.  
  
"Well, way to state the obvious," the invisible Tom muttered. Krystal let go of Tom in shock.  
  
'We mustn't tell them!' Krystal panicked. 'I don't trust that toad with our secrets. Tell them that you have an invisibility cloak or something.' Fox knew she was talking to Tom, but he could still hear her.  
  
"Uh, it's a prototype level three invisibility, uh, shield. Yeah, that's it."  
  
"Cool! Is it high level alkaline?"  
  
"Um, yeah."  
  
"I thought that they failed on every test on alkaline shields."  
  
"Well, uh, they made it this time," Tom stuttered. Fox could tell that he was running out of excuses.  
  
"Tom, don't you have that thing to do?" Krystal said between clenched teeth.  
  
"Uh, yeah," Tom said, reappearing with a quiet crack, "Gotta go to Fox's cabin now." The three rushed out.  
  
Fox bumped into his door and quickly punched in the two-digit code. They squeezed in when it opened with a hiss. Fox fumbled with the second code three times before the door closed.  
  
'Close call.' Krystal thought.  
  
'Uh, why are we hiding?' Tom looked around, his eyes squinting several times on the door.  
  
'It's a secret only three must know and three must keep.'  
  
'You go that outta the book?' Fox asked.  
  
'Where else?' Krystal noticed Tom's blank look again, and she started explaining again.  
  
'Ah, cool. But how come I can't talk to anyone else with these thinking powers?' Tom asked.  
  
'I think only the three kinds can do it.' Fox shrugged.  
  
'Then how come you don't have a gem?' Tom was beginning to sound like a curious schoolgirl. Fox pondered that for a second.  
  
"Andross!" He shouted as he jumped up. Krystal pulled him back.  
  
'What?'  
  
'That ape! He has the Ruby! He stole it from my dad!'  
  
'Yeah, I hate him, too.' Tom said absentmindedly, fiddling with his chain again and popping back to invisibility.  
  
'I hate you when you do that.' Krystal groped around and prodded Tom's nose again.  
  
'This will be a backup plan in case one of us gets captured. I mean the invisibility part.' Fox got up and opened the door. Peppy's stern face blocked him from exiting.  
  
"Done with your little chat?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, it was about."  
  
"Go on."  
  
"Family," Krystal finished. Peppy's expression turned softer.  
  
"Sorry, then," he walked off. Tom gave a sigh and walked out, too.  
  
**  
  
"These aerial photographs were taken yesterday at midnight, Cornerian time, on Venom. Looks like we wiped most of their army out, but lots of bases still remain," Colonel Alben waved the laser pointer around the maps and photos dangerously. Fox ducked a number of times to avoid it from blinding him.  
  
All the pilots, though still few, were crowded around the overhead glass projector in the main conference room. Krystal decided not to come because she started to develop a fever from her wounds. The Emerald was going to come in handy again.  
  
There wasn't much left of the Venomian army, that's for sure, but large, gray buildings remain on the surface shown by the projector. Looks like another battle was necessary.  
  
"We will take flight at 1800 hours tomorrow, so get dressed a hour before, for those who are too vain," Colonel Alben was directing the comment to a male sparrow who obviously takes too much pride in his feathers. He sunk deep into his chair.  
  
A badger raised his paw and swung it furiously in the air, knocking a raccoon to the floor. Colonel Alben nodded.  
  
"Will we get any outside help?"  
  
"Yes," Colonel Alben said, "The Cornerian infantry has agreed to take 30% of their foot soldiers from Fortuna, Corneria, Titania, and what's left of Zoness. The carriers at Sector Y also promised a hand." Fox let out a sigh of relief. At least when he's shot down, there will be backup.  
  
"Dismissed!" Bill shouted. The pilots rushed to get up and away to polish up their jets. Fox stayed behind.  
  
"Hey, Bill!"  
  
"Yeah, Fox?"  
  
"What's the total population of the army in those planets?"  
  
"Uh, that's confidential."  
  
"Come on, Bill. You're speaking to a commander."  
  
"Fine. Roughly, uh, about 500," Bill suddenly became very interested in his shoes. Fox gaped.  
  
"I knew it! Ha, I knew it!" Fox stomped on the marble floor, "What's that, only 150 more units? That comes to, including the infantry on Katina. 400."  
  
"Uh, yeah."  
  
"Yeesh, that helps us," Fox muttered sarcastically.  
  
"By boosting morale," Bill pointed out; "Statistics show that an army who is confident fights better than an army who knows they'll lose."  
  
"You've better have a good plan up your sleeve."  
  
"I don't."  
  
"Then why are we on this mission?"  
  
"Because we'll finish this for once."  
  
"Didn't we finish it before?"  
  
"Yes, but Andross always comes back."  
  
"So what's so different about this time?"  
  
"We're gonna nuke the place afterwards so we're sure that no life survives."  
  
"Isn't that a plan?"  
  
"Sort of."  
  
"What kind of damage to Venom's environment?"  
  
"Wake up, Fox! Venom doesn't have an environment! And why should you care?"  
  
"Dunno. Just popped into my mind for some reason."  
  
"You can get very weird sometimes."  
  
"We're gonna lose."  
  
"Yeah, right."  
  
**  
  
"What's the date today, Slip?" Fox flicked on the television and watched the news.  
  
"Uh, Bill's having dinner with the Colonel." Slippy jumped onto the couch, too, and took out his electronic organizer and pressed a few buttons.  
  
"The calendar!"  
  
"Oh right. June 20," Slippy declared.  
  
"And what's so special about this day?" Fox turned his head slightly as the reporter (a hound) ranted on about the war.  
  
"Uh, aren't you going to tell me?" Slippy franticly pressed buttons on the mini-laptop.  
  
"It's the day every month that Falco calls!" Fox gave Slippy a small slap to the head.  
  
"Oh, yeah," as if on cue, Fox's communicator started beeping. He flicked it open.  
  
"Hi, fur-face," Falco grinned, his beak close to the screen as usual. He didn't seem to have bothered combing his blue feathers today, but he had his wrinkle-less black leather jacket as always. He appeared to be in his Arwing.  
  
"What's up?" Fox asked. Well, that's a stupid question, Fox.  
  
"Open the hatch and power down your shields, will ya?" Falco plucked a red feather from his eyebrow.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"So I can shoot you into oblivion," Falco rolled his eyes, "So I can come in, you bird-brain! Uh, forget I said that." Chuckling, Fox commanded Slippy to go to the cockpit. Slippy was in a bad mood today, because he grumbled something about cruel, heartless tyrants ruling over underrepresented toads.  
  
Moments later, Fox heard the hatch opening, and a few minutes later, closing. Fox rushed to the docking bay and waited for the hydraulic systems to open.  
  
"I haven't seen your ugly mug for a while," Falco smiled as he jumped out and clapped his wing on Fox's shoulder. Fox looked over Falco's shoulder. There were three Arwings (a familiar sight with Krystal crashing hers) and a pink shuttle. That could only mean.  
  
"Hi, Fox!"  
  
.Katt. Friendly-tempered and beautiful, just like other cats, and yet Fox couldn't stand her with Falco together: They had way too many arguments. It's a wonder that Katt hadn't tried to eat Falco yet. Oh, wait, that's not a wonder. It's a wonder that Falco hadn't tried to eat Katt yet. Katt loved Falco and Falco hated Katt.  
  
Falco, in his usual leather jacket and black jeans, strolled calmly around the Great Fox, occasionally saying "Hey, I haven't seen that in a while", even to Slippy ("Hey, I haven't seen that thing in a long time!"). Katt, in a pink tee shirt and blue jeans, didn't say a thing until the kitchen.  
  
"Tuna!" Katt licked her lips and watched intently as Krystal was opening a large can of it using the motorized can opener that, evidently, Slippy's great-grandfather invented. Peppy, who joined Slippy to watch the news, cracked up upon hearing the word.  
  
"Tuna? What's so funny about tuna?" Falco asked. Slippy doubled over with laughter.  
  
"Oh," Fox threw a empty can at Slippy, "Me, Krystal, and Tom all love tuna."  
  
"So? That's not funny."  
  
"You'd be surprised at how we find humor walled away from civilization."  
  
Fox pushed Falco and Katt down on chairs and told them all about his adventures, except, of course, the gems. They were completely fascinated. They obviously were bored out of their minds being mercenaries. Looks like Falco didn't get that shiny, fame-broiled, solo career he wanted.  
  
"Wow, you're so lucky, Fox," Falco said after Fox was done his story, right up to there and then.  
  
"How much did you get paid?" Katt asked. Fox was stumped. They were so busy with Krystal that he didn't even have time to ask for his paycheck.  
  
"I'll go ask General Pepper," Fox jumped up and walked to the cockpit. Rob was busy making upgrades in the programs and systems, so Fox flipped over his communicator and pressed the speed dial button for General Pepper's residence. It was 9 o'clock in the evening in Corneria, anyway. General Pepper came on after three rings, and he looked bored.  
  
"Good afternoon, Fox," he yawned.  
  
"Hello, General," Fox grinned nicely, hoping to worm some extra cash if he was being good. Fox began asking many questions about Pepper's wife and kids; the Lylat System; the office. 'He's gotta give me at least one thousand extra credits for that act.'  
  
"So, General, when do I paid for my exploration?"  
  
"What exploration?" General Pepper asked. Fox frowned.  
  
"The one where you sent us to a place three hundred light years away. Say. north, west, west on your star-map co-ordinates."  
  
"I don't remember," the General thought for a moment, "Oh, of course! The exploration thing. I'll send you the check electronically." Fox smiled.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Sure. Good night, StarFox."  
  
Fox walked away to his cabin. Flicking on his computer, he scanned his file. The General must've done it right away, because there were ten thousand new credits in addition to the five thousand Fox already saved. Clicking on a little button on the keyboard, he split it up between his teammates. Thinking hard, he flicked another button on the keyboard and typed like a maniac.  
  
"Krystal?" Fox called. Krystal poked her head in less than two seconds. Fox rotated one-eighty degrees on his chair, "I need some information for your new bank account." Krystal raised an eyebrow. Fox sighed for the sixth time in the day and started explaining about money.  
  
"Stupid concept," Krystal said after, "Why can't you keep the money in your pocket?"  
  
"It would be too heavy. Besides, no one likes using cash anymore, so you actually can't carry the money around in your pocket," Fox clicked a button, "You get a card though. If you want something, swipe it on the card reader beside the item and you can take it out. Of course, the bank automatically withdraws the money and gives it to the store."  
  
"Sounds simple enough."  
  
"Okay. Last name?"  
  
"Don't have one. Make one up."  
  
"Um, Blue? Okay. What's your birthday? Year, month, day in that order, please."  
  
"Er, 5067, November, 5. Yeah."  
  
"That's interesting. Mine is on November 7, same year. Species?"  
  
"Fox."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"No, fox."  
  
"Oh, right. Occupation?"  
  
"Um, mercenary."  
  
"Done. Thanks. You just got two thousand and five hundred credits."  
  
"Is that a lot?"  
  
"You could live off of that for ten years, given that you use it sparingly," Fox was just about to exit the computer when the screen started to fizzle. Fox smacked the hard drive, but to no avail. Suddenly, Wolf's face materialized on the screen.  
  
"Hello, Fox."  
  
"What the he- What are you doing on my computer?" Fox growled and smacked the computer again.  
  
"To negotiate," Wolf seemed to be very happy. That can't be good.  
  
"For what?" Fox tried a hard boot, but it didn't work. The screen didn't even go off.  
  
"For money."  
  
"And in exchange?" Fox smack the monitor this time. The screen fizzled a little, but stayed the picture.  
  
"You get your life," Wolf smiled.  
  
"Classic. Ransom without foxnapping."  
  
"No, look out your window," Wolf's smile grew bigger. Fox turned to look at the window. Wolf was right outside it, holding a gun.  
  
"Go on, shoot," Fox laughed. Those glass panes were laser-proof and bulletproof.  
  
"Oh, you don't get it, do you? Look again," Wolf shoved a figure in front of the window. It was Krystal.  
  
"What the hell?" Fox turned. The Krystal behind him doesn't have the Emerald, but the one outside did. The one behind him grinned a maniacal grin and punched the lights out of Fox.  
  
**  
  
"Oh, crap," Fox got up, but he was already up. He was stuck to the wall of something. There was a sharp pain in his back.  
  
'Krystal?' Silence. Then, Fox remembered the day before. There were two Krystals. One was, quite obviously, a clone from Photonia. The other was the real one. But how could Wolf get to another planet in a matter of seconds? Wait, the Krystal that punched him didn't have the Emerald. Six hours was enough time to get to another solar system and back. All Wolf needed to do was to slip into the Great Fox at night, since Slippy never locks the door and get a blood sample from Krystal when she was asleep, then steal the warp drive from Slippy during the meeting.  
  
Fox groaned as he felt his jaw. It was swollen, and dry blood had leaked out of his mouth. Everywhere else was fine, but Fox was still stuck to the wall. Fox pushed hard, and with a rip, he was off. He was hooked to the wall with a small pin in the vest. Fox walked around the room, taking inventory of his surroundings.  
  
It was a brass, dome room, obviously in a base. Was he in Venom? Most likely. The room was stock empty of things except lights and a door leading out.  
  
Fox tried his luck with the door. It was an old fashioned on, with a knob. It swung easily out, and Fox walked into another room just like the last, but with Wolf waiting patiently, his gun aimed at an unconscious Krystal, who was also pinned to the wall. Krystal had many holes in her shirt, all bloody. Wolf was in leather jacket and leather pants, still with the eyepatch. His ear seemed to be ripped from their last dogfight.  
  
The fake Krystal was standing behind Wolf.  
  
"Don't worry about her," Wolf said, gesturing at the fake Krystal, "She'll be evaporated soon, anyway."  
  
"What is going on?"  
  
"This is pretty fun, you know, Fox," Wolf suddenly pulled the trigger and shot Krystal in the chest. Fox was horrified. Blood gushed out from the wound and spilled to the ground, which was already covered in red liquid. Wolf continued, "I shoot her, she heals in a matter of seconds. Look." The wound was already gone from Krystal. Wolf chuckled and shot her again in the leg.  
  
"You sick son of a-"  
  
"Don't push it, Fox," Wolf swerved the gun at Fox, "Or else you'll get a taste of this, too." Fox stopped dead.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"Well, see, after you shot me down on Venom, Andross thought I was dead, so he formed a new StarWolf team, with some guy named Britch as the leader. I was forced into exile, and I have quite taken to living on Katina. Nice place, isn't it? No one to bother me," Wolf scoffed. He loved attention; "I don't have much money." Wolf coughed lightly as if he was embarrassed to admit it.  
  
"So?"  
  
"So, I want to borrow three thousand credits from you for me to live off some proper food for once and get a job," Wolf nearly burst into tears.  
  
"What?" Fox dropped his jaw; "You went into all that trouble just for three thousand measly credits?"  
  
"You're right, it's too much. How about one thousand until I get back on my feet again?"  
  
Fox nearly laughed, but Wolf had the gun, so Fox bit his tongue and snorted.  
  
"No, really. I'm serious, Fox."  
  
"Ok, but do me one favor. First, do you still have the security cards for Venom's bases?" Fox's mind turned to the Ruby of Blood.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Go there and take Andross's ruby."  
  
"Are you nuts?" Wolf cried, "Even if I somehow did manage to get in, I'm gonna have a hell of a time trying not to wake up Andross during his naps."  
  
"Whatever. Gimme six hours to get the money."  
  
"Okay, but the girl stays. The elevator is hidden behind that off-colored brick. Damn, this is fun," Wolf shot Krystal again. Fox winced and took off.  
  
**  
  
"I'd like a withdrawal of a thousand credits, please," Fox said to the young squirrel clerk. Luckily the base had a makeshift bank in the lobby. Fox's mind wandered off to the car he used to get to the base from Wolf's base. It was so old it still used internal combustion.  
  
"Here you go," she threw a large sack into Fox's arms, "Come again, Commander."  
  
Peering over the sack periodically, Fox made it back to the car. Luckily, he used the entrance opposite the Great Fox, so no one that he knew was likely to notice. Chucking the bag into the passenger seat, Fox turned the key (another Stone Age invention) and pushed the pedal.  
  
"Crap, this is hard," Fox muttered as he stepped on the brake again to stop hitting on a large outcropping of dirt from construction.  
  
With another hour of driving, Fox made it back to the hill of Wolf's base. With a swift motion, the fake dirt swung down and dropped Fox and the car into a large elevator. Jumping out and pressing a button, Fox heaved the sack over his shoulder and carried it down just as the door swung open.  
  
"Took you long enough," Wolf said as he shot Krystal again.  
  
"Will you quit that?" Fox hurled the sack towards Wolf. It hit his chest and rolled off, throwing him backward a few yards.  
  
"Thanks, Fox. No hard feelings about trying three times to kill you, right?" Wolf opened the bag and examined the contents.  
  
"Yeah, right," Fox said sarcastically. Pulling a bleeding Krystal down, he heaved her over his shoulder and walked away.  
  
"Fox, just for hitting me with the sack, don't take the car," Wolf laughed. He was still evil.  
  
Grumbling, Fox opened the elevator door and went out. Fox vaguely remembered the day that one of his best friends turned his back to Fox.  
  
**  
  
"Hey, Bill, whatcha get on the math test?" Fox, no more than ten years old at the time, ran to catch up with a husky about half a year older than he was.  
  
"Oh," Bill snorted, "Seventy-nine percent."  
  
"Aw, that blows. I got eighty-five," Fox waved the paper in Bill's face.  
  
They were walking home, as usual, from elementary school through a park. Bill's house was just a block from Fox's, so they often played games together as youngsters. Bill's father was an engineer for the army and his mother was a secretary for a general teaching in the academy. Fox's parents had a lot more adventure. Even though his mother did not have an occupation, his father was the leader of the StarFox team, a group of three mercenaries saving people from all sorts of disasters. Fox was very proud.  
  
The two were chattering unconcernedly, but behind them, a gray wolf sneaked up behind them, his paws raised.  
  
"HIYA, Fox!" Wolf O'Donnel clapped his paw on Fox's shoulder. Fox jumped a foot into the air.  
  
"Jeez, Wolf! You're gonna gimme a heart attack someday!" Fox panted. Wolf chuckled, but not the sort of chuckle he gave today, but a warm, sincere one.  
  
"Nonsense! If a pilot at the age of ten gets a heart attack, I'll sell my soul to the devil himself," Wolf swung his pack around and rummaged through. He picked a piece of paper that was wedged between a binder and his laptop  
  
"What'd you get on the test?" Fox peered over.  
  
"Ninety-eight," Wolf proudly waved. Bill, with a shocked look on his face, grabbed the test away and read it.  
  
"And you didn't cheat?"  
  
"Would I ever?" Wolf was just about to grab it back when a big ape shoved him over.  
  
"Hey, Andrew, leave him alone," Fox pulled Wolf away from Andrew and his buddy, Leon.  
  
"Why would we do that? Hey Wolf," Leon grabbed Wolf, who was well over larger than both Andrew and Leon, and offered him the proposal that would change his life forever, "How would you like to hang out with us instead of these wimps?"  
  
If Wolf had said no, he would've have become the smartest animal in Corneria, also being a member of the praised StarFox team, but he didn't say no. He said yes. In a matter of years, Wolf will be hired by Andross to plant a car bomb in James' car, killing Vixy, and he will also be sent on missions to wipe out StarFox two times.  
  
**  
  
"Dear God!" Tom rushed forward to help Fox. He took Krystal and helped Fox down to a chair.  
  
"What happened?" Slippy asked hurriedly.  
  
"Met an old friend," Fox said simply, "Oh, she's fine."  
  
"Hurry up, Fox, we're supposed to leave now for the battle," Falco pulled Fox along.  
  
Krystal yawned and sat up.  
  
"Hi. What's for dinner?" She asked.  
  
**  
  
"He shot me?" Krystal was staging a private conversation with Fox, blocking out the signal to other pilots. They were speeding along to Venom. The green planet was looking very evil.  
  
"Yeah, about a hundred times, judging by the blood."  
  
"I didn't feel a thing!"  
  
"Eh. Emerald," Fox said, sitting back.  
  
"I'm darn lucky to have it, or I'd be dead at least three hundred times now," Krystal mumbled.  
  
"ETA to Venom's atmosphere: 15 minutes," Tom said, "Charge up your shields, guys, it's go time. I see defenders up ahead!"  
  
Fox peered forward. Indeed, there were about fifty ships dotted together before them. Fox fired a single shot, and the other pilots followed suit. They weren't much to worry about, just robotic target practice. Krystal actually shot down five of them. Not surprising; she fired enough lasers that Fox could use to shoot down a planet.  
  
The pilots tried to enter the planet's atmosphere with the least amount of attention attracted. Venom's air was thin and toxic. It was easy to fly through and see through, but it was always rather dark on the planet, so vision sometimes proved a problem. The fleet moved easily towards the bases, covered by darkness, until Colonel Alben gave the signal.  
  
"Lines one, two, and three, drop missiles," she roared. Thirty bombs sped towards the nearest jet warehouse. It went up in flames with an explosion that rocked the earth.  
  
Apparently alerted, Venomian crafts sped out of bases and airfields. There weren't many, though, and the help Colonel Alben requested was here. Large carriers dropped off infantry in masks and lots of tanks. The air was swarming with green and red lasers a minute later.  
  
"Fox, get this guy off my tail!" Bill shouted.  
  
"Krystal, stop shooting him."  
  
"Oops, sorry."  
  
Fox was having an easy time. Most of the crafts were robotic, unlike the ones that attacked Katina, so they were easy pickings. They were too dumb to actually return fire. Fox counted fifty crafts down before he let the computer take over the math.  
  
"Lines six and ten, attack the bases! Lines four and seven, cover them. Say, Bill, this is a pretty nice night." Colonel Alben seemed to be in a good mood. Apparently, warehouses being blown up are her definition of a fun date.  
  
The battle was in the Cornerian favor. In a matter of thirty minutes, the battle was over and the infantry stormed the remaining warehouses. They took ninety prisoners out with their paws up and their blasters on self- destruct.  
  
"Bogey at seven!" Bill pointed at the eastern sky.  
  
"I got him!" Fox sped after the craft. It was a small ship, speeding out from a base and heading towards space. The pilot was a good one. He deflected twenty lasers from Fox before he shot the engine and the jet screamed towards the ground in a cloud of smoke. Fox caught a glimpse of the pilot as it fell past. Andross.  
  
"I'll get you, you moron," Fox whispered as he sped after the flaming craft. It wasn't long before it crashed and exploded into the plains. Fox bumped neatly on the dirt and strapped on a gas mask. Opening the cockpit, he jumped out and headed toward the remains of the ship.  
  
"You." Andross coughed. He was still alive. Fox raised his blaster gun.  
  
"You!" Fox yelled as he pulled the trigger again and again until he was sure that big brain of his was rotten. Scooping up the Ruby on his chest, Fox put it on. There was a whirl of sounds that Fox could not recognize and he was thrown again into the sucking of magic.  
  
**  
  
'You got it!' James smiled  
  
'Sure did, Dad.' Fox smiled back.  
  
'Keep it safe. Keep it away from Venom.'  
  
'For obvious reasons?'  
  
'For obvious reasons.'  
  
'Say, Dad, how do you contact me like this?'  
  
'It doesn't matter how I get here; it matters that I got here.'  
  
'As always.'  
  
'Good-bye, Fox. Don't give up, and trust your instincts.'  
  
'Will do.'  
  
**  
  
A/N: I know, I know; it's still not finished. I'll be writing the sequel soon, so keep your shorts on. For those of you who do not wear shorts, keep you pants on. For those of you who wear skirts, dresses, or other lower limb attire, do so as said above. For those of you who do not wear any of those mentioned above, you need a psychiatrist. Yes, for those of you who are spelling freaks, 'psychiatrist' is spelled right. I think I say 'for those of you' too often, eh? And yes, for those of you wanting to know, I'm Canadian. 


	3. The past is so easily remembered

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in Starfox 64 or Starfox Adventures. If I did, I'd be stinking rich and I wouldn't write this. A big sorry to Zoe2000 for kinda stealing her idea about an Arctic Fox. I really had no idea she had one in her stories, too. I only noticed after I was halfway through my story. The same to Foxmerc on the Alben/Aldon thing. Jeez, great minds think alike, eh?  
  
Intro: Okay, setting. One year after the Dinosaur Planet incident. On Corneria, I guess. This is based on the N64/Gamecube setting, which means: Fox and his team are broke, Fox never met Fara, and General Pepper is not obsessed with suckers (haha). I never finished the game; heck, I don't even have the game; so don't hound my butt for stuff like 'hey, Fox didn't do that' blah, blah, blah. Gimme a break wills ya? But I'd appreciate it if you would send me a formal e-mail about it, and then I would change or update my story about that.  
  
Okay, now on with the darn story.  
  
  
  
"Ah-choo!" Fox blew his nose furiously on a tissue. He must've caught a cold from that coughing badger he met on the street.  
  
"Darn!" Pepper backed away as Fox's snout burst with mucus, "Don't spray me like that!"  
  
It was good to be home, but a journey back can be made a painful nightmare if you have flu virus cells going around and infecting nerve tissues. Fox's back ached and he saw little green dudes when all was silent.  
  
The Great Fox was parked back in the hanger again, with Falco and Katt dropping in everyday, but they had rented an apartment on the outskirts of Hansonville. Bill and the other pilots also went home, but Colonel Alben decided to take up a room in Bill's house also in the little town, not far away from Fox's hanger.  
  
Peppy was delivering Fox's usual supply of fish to his cabin and talking about what he did down there. Fox told the story over and over again about how he had shot Andross dead for the third time.  
  
"Did a lot of blood come out?" That was Falco's question in the den when Fox made everyone gather around and listen because he was tired of repeating the story over and over again. Fox had to say yes to that.  
  
"Were you hurt?" As was Peppy's obvious question. Well, obviously not.  
  
"Did he drop any cool gadgets?" Do I really have to say it? Fine, it was Slippy. The answer is even more obviously not.  
  
"Cool," Tom had said, for lack of better wording.  
  
"Way to go, tiger," Katt patted Fox head as if he were some kind of baby that said his first word.  
  
'I'll slip you the Emerald when no one's looking. I think I will get rid of that dreaded disease.' Krystal of course said this. Fox had told Tom and Krystal telepathically about the Ruby, and they were itching to see what it does on Fox. Too bad personal time was cut with Slippy being around all the time, blabbering about his daily paychecks from a company that sold parts to ships, along with Slippy's new patented warp drive.  
  
"I'll be back at six to give your dinner," Peppy took the empty dish and fork and went out.  
  
"Don't bother," Fox called after him.  
  
Just seconds after Peppy strolled away, Krystal peeked in and thought to Fox. 'Hi, how are you doing?'  
  
'Peachy, really.'  
  
Krystal tossed him the Emerald of Earth from her neck. There was a familiar blinding green flash of light as Fox clasped it to his chest and as Fox felt his sinuses clear up.  
  
'How are you now?'  
  
'A bit peachier, I guess.'  
  
Fox got up and returned the Emerald to Krystal's neck. Patting her on the shoulder, he skipped away to the den. Everyone stared as he jumped clear over the coffee table in the den and landed beside Katt on the leather couch. Fox picked up the remote and flicked on the comedy channel on the little television set.  
  
"Oh!" Katt was flung off the cushion by Fox's heavy jump. She landed on the armrest and sat on her own tail. She muffled a scream by biting her lip.  
  
"I think someone feels better," Falco sat down on Katt's former seat. Katt was still biting her lip.  
  
"Yeah. Those white blood cells of mine are working overtime," Fox grinned. Tom grinned, too, his Sapphire glowing softly under his shirt.  
  
"Savage, they are," Peppy commented, sitting down on the larger couch opposite Fox's.  
  
"AAAAAAA!" Fox guessed Katt couldn't keep in the pain. Tails were rather sensitive, after all. Fox could remember the countless times that either he had stepped on someone else's tail or someone else had stepped on his tail. Those were gruesome memories that Fox hoped never to live up to again.  
  
Fox apologized and got her some milk from the fridge to make up for it. 'Strange how they behave,' Fox thought when Katt started slurping the milk like she was stuck in the desert for a few months.  
  
"Ha," Falco chuckled as Peppy tried to get up off the couch unsuccessfully to get his carrot that he left on the kitchen table. He burst into song as Peppy fell down for the third time, "Old gray hare, he ain't what he used to be, ain't what he used to be."  
  
'Tsk, how rude!' Krystal thought.  
  
'People are like that all the time. They love to poke fun at others.' Tom shrugged and gave Slippy, who just walked in, a huge wegie. Everyone except Krystal cracked up, even the victim.  
  
"Owie, my thermal underwear," Slippy rubbed his behind.  
  
'Tom!' Krystal exclaimed, shocked.  
  
'Get used to it.' Fox said that whenever Krystal saw something unusual that she wasn't used to. So far, she has been forced to get used to beauty, shopping, money, and even games. She didn't understand the point in killing people on a shooting stimulation.  
  
Yesterday, Katt dragged Krystal out to buy clothes. Katt, of course, came back to Falco's apartment with loads of stuff, but Krystal only bought a new plain, gray shirt. A few hours after, Katt forced Krystal into putting on makeup. Krystal was horrified when she saw herself with eye shadow and plunged her head in a sink full of water. That was typical Krystal behavior. You kinda get used to it when you are forced to remind her how to use the electric blanket every night.  
  
Almost everything Krystal owned was magical. Most of the stuff she had was unusual, but known and rather familiar to Cornerians. Katt went screaming down the hall when Krystal let her try on one of her battle bracelets. Apparently, they like to squeeze the wrist of the person wearing them. Another time, Krystal let Tom handle her magic staff. Tom waved it around a little and the staff and quite having a mind of its own, it whacked him in the head several times. Tom also went screaming down the hall.  
  
Falco had quite taken kindly to peaceful, country life instead of shooting down space ships. There weren't much of those left, anyway. He had stopped being so mean to Katt after the first few days, and they actually seemed bearable now, although Falco had to work overtime usually at the local supermarket to earn enough money to keep up with Katt's spending.  
  
Speaking of jobs, the StarFox team returned to their old country occupations. Fox had helped some squirrel actor who was afraid of heights by doing a superb chase act with an old army jet. Slippy had copyrighted his warp drive and was making a fortune, but he was wasting it mainly on exotic fly soup. Peppy had been promoted from professor to vice principal. Tom usually helped Fox with his scenes. Krystal, well, kept to herself, as she was surprised at anything around the corner, totally obliterating any chances for a job of her own.  
  
Fox, himself was getting pretty annoyed at all the flirting he was getting off the streets. Girls flocked around him, getting snapshots and autographs. Once, a lioness tackled him down and planted a wet kiss on his snout. Fox must've been sick for a week after that.  
  
It has been a month from the second invasion of the Lylat System, and the StarFox team, now swelled to seven members, were getting impatient at all the goody-goody citizen stuff. Slippy, the most unlikely one, was complaining about how bored he was.  
  
Tom's birthday was three weeks ago, and Fox nearly gave him a heart attack by pulling him by the ears out of bed to his cake. Being rather disoriented from the early wake-up call, Tom tripped over some of Slippy's old clothes on the kitchen floor and fell flat on his cake. The candles scorched his fur some, but that was easily fixed with the Emerald.  
  
'Hey, guys. Why don't we go to the park this evening to see what the Ruby does?' Fox wondered for a sec about how inspiration strikes at the most unlikely of moments.  
  
'Sure.' They replied in unison.  
  
**  
  
"Wow, look at all the stars," Krystal pointed up. It was a clear night, and the stars were twinkling overhead. Since there was no moon on Corneria, the outdoor lighting was a bit off. The glowing gems sorted that out, lighting the area with the soft glow of green, blue, and red.  
  
The park was large, with many trees but no benches or garbage cans. Grassy hills covered the place, and the three foxes were sitting on the highest one, peering at the town and the sky before getting down to business.  
  
"Try it," Tom pointed at the Ruby of Blood around Fox's neck. Fox fiddled with it a bit; raising his eyebrows as it glowed brighter.  
  
"Uh, do something," Krystal said.  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Jump around," Tom suggested. Fox leaped into the air and came down. It must've been fifty feet.  
  
"High."  
  
"Hello," Fox said dumbly. Dry jokes were common aboard the Great Fox, but Fox had some good ones up his sleeve that he wanted to save for rainy days. Fox was known for his stinginess on everything.  
  
"Okay, run around," Tom gestured at the fields below. Fox did a few laps around the large park. He went so fast that Tom must've sworn he made a red ring around them. Fox jumped high up and landed squarely between Krystal and Tom.  
  
"Take a blow at me," Krystal spread her arms a bit. Fox shook his head no.  
  
"Fine, hit me," Tom offered. Fox grinned evilly and gave him one right in the stomach.  
  
"AAAAA!" Tom landed some thirty feet away in a bush. He groaned, pained. Krystal giggled non-stop as she and Fox rushed forward and knelt beside the wounded Arctic Fox.  
  
"Wow, that's tough," Fox said as Krystal healed Tom. Tom stood up, rubbing his head.  
  
"Oh, dizzy spells," he stumbled around in a circle.  
  
"Wait, I think I know one," Krystal said, pulling out her staff from the leather strap on her back. Waving it around in a circle, she pointed at Tom. A flash of white hit him, and he was thrown backwards another thirty feet into an oak tree.  
  
"Not that kind!" Fox barked, running like quicksilver towards Tom, dragging Krystal along.  
  
"Yeesh, how was I supposed to know?" Krystal healed Tom again, but this time, he didn't open his eyes or get up.  
  
"Did you kill him?" Fox whispered.  
  
"No, he's just unconscious," Krystal sat down on the soft grass. Fox did likewise.  
  
It was a rather romantic setting: friend unconscious on the floor, starlight, nighttime, and a lot of privacy.  
  
'Don't even think about it.' Krystal mumbled the thought, reading Fox's mind again.  
  
'I think I already did, considering you read my thinking and thought to me not to think it.' Fox smiled.  
  
'What?'  
  
'Oh, never mind.'  
  
Suddenly, a figure leaped out of the bushes and threw a large bag at Fox's face.  
  
"Gah!" Fox was hit and hurled over the hill and landed some ten feet away.  
  
"Ow!" The figure was also thrown over the hill as Krystal got up and tackled him.  
  
"Ah!" Now, Krystal hurled away by the dark figure.  
  
"Stop it!" The person yelled as Krystal tackled him again. The figure shone a flashlight on Krystal's face, "Oh, you."  
  
"Wolf?" Fox ran over to the two fighters. It was Wolf O'Donnel, and the bag that hit Fox was full of credits.  
  
"Yeah, who did you think it was? Your mom?" Wolf's voice, dripping with sarcasm as usual, revealed its position as it shone a flashlight on himself. Wolf, still in his black leather jacket like last time, had seemed to get a bit pudgier, but he had always been as skinny as a stick, so it didn't really matter.  
  
"You killed my mom, remember?" Fox growled a bit.  
  
"Chill out! No offence meant. I'm just here, returning your money, that's all."  
  
"You tried to kill me twice, too."  
  
"Yeesh, it was my job," Wolf sat down and shone the flashlight on Tom, who was still lying in a heap beneath the tree, "What the heck happened to him?"  
  
"We knocked him out cold with a punch each," Krystal said. Her upper lip was curling a bit. No wonder; Wolf shot her a hundred times with a blaster.  
  
"Yeah. Well, anyway, I got myself a low paying job and a little place of my own. I'm proud of it; since I didn't have to kill anyone to get it," Wolf waved the flashlight in the direction of the town.  
  
"You killed Krystal's clone," Fox pointed out.  
  
"Well, that's a clone. You killed two of Andross' clones, and you get paid well for it, so why can't I kill a few original people?"  
  
"Because they're innocent," Krystal hissed. Wolf shrugged.  
  
"If they didn't die, I would've. Andross would've tortured me to death."  
  
"Selfish grant," Krystal muttered.  
  
"Shut yer pie hole."  
  
"What?"  
  
"It means shut your mouth," Fox explained. Krystal struck out with a fist and hit Wolf in the stomach.  
  
"Huh! Now we're even!" Krystal spat on Wolf. Wolf endured it, amazingly. Fox, his anger suddenly rising, felt that it was his turn. He pulled out his blaster and aimed it Wolf's leg.  
  
"Ack, now that's g-going too f-far, Fox!" Wolf stuttered, sliding away on his butt.  
  
"Eh, shoot me later for your eye," Fox reasoned as he pulled the trigger and the laser burnt a hole in Wolf's upper leg muscles. He howled in pain. Fox dropped the gun on Wolf's lap.  
  
"Oh, I'm really mad," Wolf barked. He picked up the blaster, shot Fox in the arm and threw the gun away.  
  
"Ow!" Fox cursed the gun, but went and picked it up anyway.  
  
Krystal put the Emerald on his wound and it was gone in a flash, but the pain still was there. Krystal then bent over and placed the gem on Wolf's wound (after he scurried away some more) and his blood also seeped back in the hole and the wound itself disappeared in a split second later.  
  
"Huh?" Wolf peeled off his eyepatch, revealing a new gray-iris eyeball that matched the other one. He gasped as he poked the new flesh.  
  
"Even?" Fox asked.  
  
"E-even," Wolf stuttered again. He blinked his new eye and groped around, "Wow, I haven't seen depth in what? Eight years?"  
  
"Think of it as eight birthday presents from an old friend you betrayed," Fox hissed. Wolf hung his head.  
  
"You didn't think I would stand wedgies for the rest of my life from Andrew, did you?"  
  
"Well, you should've done it for Bill and me!" Fox shouted.  
  
"You're right," Wolf sighed. He clapped his hand on Fox's shoulder like he used to and walked back home.  
  
**  
  
"Cool, did you guys read the paper this morning?" Slippy waved the black and white, recycled, and re-printed paper in their faces. Fox flicked a donut crumb at him and snatched the paper away.  
  
"Hmm, there's a new exhibit at the museum," Fox read the headlines. Peppy, always interested in history and arts, peered over from his side of the table, bumping over Tom's cappuccino. The hot liquid spilled on Krystal's shirt and she screamed a little scream.  
  
"Not any exhibit!" Slippy squeaked excitedly, ignoring Krystal as she bumped into him on the way to the bathroom, "That 4000 year old bow is magic! It can fire homing arrows, bomb arrows, and it can even fire fire arrows."  
  
"Really? Sounds a bit like Krystal's staff," Fox examined the picture of it. It was a large, composite bow decorated with bright blue (even though the black and white paper didn't show it) gems. It really did look something like Krystal's staff.  
  
'Krystal?' Tom asked.  
  
'Yeah?'  
  
'Do you know anything about a weird, four-millennium bow that can lock onto people? It looks kinda like your staff.' Tom inquired. There was a small pause.  
  
'Yes I do.'  
  
'Is it related to your staff?'  
  
'I think so. I remember an old story my parents used to tell. It was about a great archer, swordsman, and a wizard who fashioned three weapons. The wizard made the staff, I think, and the other two are really obvious. After that, the wizard made three gems for three warriors and gave the weapons to them.'  
  
'Then that thing is really valuable; not to mention that it's supposed to be in our hands!' Fox jolted up when his communicator started beeping. He flicked it open, but there was no picture.  
  
"Fox," it was Wolf.  
  
"What is it? Need more cash?" Fox joked. Yeah, they were like old buddies again.  
  
"I was hacking into Leon's computer to give him a computer virus, oh, I hate him, and I found out something bad: they're attacking the town!" Wolf said. 'Wow, this guy is reliable.' Tom was peeking over and listening in. Fox told Tom and Krystal about him and Wolf after Tom regained his consciousness.  
  
"What?" Fox said, keeping his voice down to avoid his other teammates looking at him funny.  
  
"They're going to steal that weird bow thing."  
  
"Jeez, they don't give up, do they?"  
  
"Nope. Even with Andross gone, they still want violence, and that bow is dangerous! We should stop them from getting it. I think I can hack into the computer mainframe of the museum and try to trick them into giving the bow to you guys for safekeeping. I personally want that thing, but you'd hunt me down," Wolf pondered that for a second, "They won't believe a thing you say about robbers, so don't bother. If my plan doesn't work, we'll have to steal it ourselves."  
  
"Wow, you got this all planned out, don't you?"  
  
"Hey, you know me," Wolf scoffed.  
  
"Well, I thought I did," Fox sighed and closed the communicator. Krystal walked in right after that. Fox dragged Tom and her into his room after breakfast was done.  
  
"Kris, we've got a problem," Tom whispered.  
  
**  
  
"Aw, come on! Kris? What kind of name is that?" Krystal whined. She didn't seem the least bit worried about the bow. Tom went off to the museum to check out the bow, and Fox was stuck with Krystal and a communicator with Wolf discussing their plans. Wolf wasn't able to fool the museum 'dudes' with his computer.  
  
"I think it's kind of cute," Falco stepped in. The two foxes fell off the top bunk bed in surprise.  
  
"Falco! How much and what did you hear?" Fox stuttered.  
  
"Something about you two lovebirds talking about a date to the museum. Just that much, but that's enough for blackmail!" Falco smiled. 'Thank goodness he's naïve!' Krystal thought.  
  
"It's not what you think, Falco," Fox picked up his communicator and shook off Krystal, who landed on his back.  
  
"Oh, it's exactly what I think."  
  
"You are the biggest moron in the galaxy," Krystal said as she punched Falco lightly in the wing as she walked out.  
  
"Way to go, Fox," Falco chuckled. Fox whispered a quick good-bye to Wolf and punched Falco in the wing, too, as he walked out. Unfortunately for the bird punk, Fox's Ruby was activated, and his fist on Falco's wing made a strange noise like a mouse being trodden on. Falco's feathery face contorted in pain.  
  
"OW!"  
  
'Time to get ready, Tom.'  
  
'Right. Hey, that painting looks like my cousin!'  
  
**  
  
"Come on!" Fox hissed to his two comrades. They had ducked through bushes and trees for an hour, and they were getting tired. Nighttime travel through the urban jungle wasn't very comfortable.  
  
"There it is!" Tom pointed forward. The museum was closed, and there were security guards around the cement pavement.  
  
The museum was between City Hall and a government office. The whole thing was painted white, with columns decorating the outside. It looked like a parliament building. The door was fashioned out of old oak, but three bluecoats wielding clubs heavily guarded it.  
  
"Okay, weapons check," Fox whispered as they camped out behind one of City Hall's stone columns.  
  
"Uh, tranquilizer guns, electric shockers, thin rope, belt hatches, the works," Tom jingled the pack around. Fox nodded to Krystal.  
  
"Oh, why me?" She put her hands on her hips.  
  
"Because you're a girl, and we're not," Fox pointed at the security guards. They all seemed to be very peaceful looking, young male dog guards. Fox nodded, "They should be a shoo-in for your charms."  
  
"Huh," Krystal puffed. She walked towards the guards anyway. She started talking, but the distance to the museum made it inaudible for Fox and Tom. Tom was telling her what to say telepathically, and Fox was chuckling silently at her acts. Soon, all three guards were gathered around her.  
  
Fox and Tom crawled along and slipped around the guards. Tom picked the lock to the door quickly with a hairpin, obviously Katt's. It was open in a flash. Fox and Tom ducked in, closing the door silently behind them. Tom tucked away the pin, and told Krystal to keep them busy.  
  
'Uh, tell them that you're single and you're looking for fun.'  
  
'What does that mean?'  
  
'Just say it. It's best that you don't know. We need ten minutes, so keep fiddling with your shirt; it makes them stare harder.'  
  
Fox was close to hysterics, but they kept silent. They were to the exhibit of the bow in seconds, and Tom took out his glass-cutting knife.  
  
A glass container guarded by velvet rope surrounded the bow. Fox realized that there was something missing. He silently told Tom to wait and Fox took out a small can of compressed gas. Spraying some of the container, the white gas revealed infrared laser detectors surrounding the thing like large spider webs.  
  
Nodding, Tom took out his wire cutters and threw them at Fox. Fox quickly searched the outside of the container for wires, and he found a few attached to the marble stone column beneath it. Snapping it swiftly, the lasers disappeared.  
  
Tom took out a plunger and Fox chucked mentally. Tom stuck the thing right to the side of the glass, and used the knife to cut around the plunger. A perfect circle was made, and the plunger sucked the glass out. Fox quickly took the bow out and stuffed it in his pack.  
  
'What now?' Krystal asked.  
  
'Erm, swish your tail under their chins.' Tom and Fox ran out quickly, but before they opened the door, they heard a high-pitched scream.  
  
'Aw, crud. What happened?' Fox asked. No answer. Pulling out their tranquilizer guns, Fox and Tom kicked open the door.  
  
The only problem was they weren't needed. Krystal already punched the living daylights out of all three of the guards and was casually walking towards her two comrades.  
  
"What did you do? Oh, wait stupid question. What did they do?" Fox asked.  
  
"Dumb animals. They don't even know my name and already they are trying skin contact."  
  
"Uh, right," Tom exchanged confused looks with Fox, "Let's get out of here before more guys come."  
  
Out of nowhere, four figures jumped out of the darkness. They were holding a fifth one tied in ropes.  
  
"Too late," a French accent said. A lizard, a pig, a monkey with a wolf tied up, and a hyena that Fox had never seen before jumped out of the darkness and into the starlight.  
  
"Leon!" Fox aimed the gun at the chameleon and fired.  
  
Leon jumped out of the way and Fox hit dirt. Another shot was fired by no other than Andrew. His shot was better and it hit Krystal in the chest, right below her Emerald. With a scream, Krystal fell and started bleeding furiously.  
  
"Darn! We have to go!" Tom pulled the injured Krystal along the road. Fox shot another one and his second tranquilizer dart hit Andrew. Wolf jerked his ropes that had bound his front paws away from the twitching albino monkey and ran towards Fox and Tom.  
  
"Run! They have rockets!" Wolf screamed hysterically. Fox, Tom, and Wolf ran out of the town streets and into the hills. Beyond those hills were a river and the park that Wolf got beat up in.  
  
"We can't leave her!" Fox yelled, pointing at Krystal. Her staff fell out of its pouch and Fox bent down to get it. Waving it towards Leon, who was still leading the chase, he fired a fireball. It blew the lizard backward into Pigma.  
  
"RUN!" Wolf screamed, pushing Tom's hand away from Krystal and pulling them both away along the grassy hills. Seconds later, Fox heard the unmistakable sound of a bazooka being fired and the rocket blast blew all three of them forward, right into the small river that marks the town's boundaries.  
  
**  
  
"Can anyone say: YOU IDIOT?" Fox screamed at Wolf. Wolf had lead them back to his apartment, which was closest after they were blown away and lost to the StarHyena team, as it is now known as.  
  
"Cool down!" Wolf pushed Fox back; "It was her life or all of ours!"  
  
"SO?"  
  
"I can find her again," Wolf said sheepishly, sitting down on a little rusty metal chair and typing furiously on his old computer. He brought up a map of the Lylat System.  
  
"Where is she?" Tom asked calmly.  
  
"Uh, the StarHyena, dumb name, had two bases. One is an underground facility right here on Corneria," Wolf pointed at a zoomed in picture of a map of their home world, "The other is on Fortuna, here." He put up another map and pointed.  
  
"How can it have bases? There's only four of them," Fox exclaimed.  
  
"Actually, all the remaining Venomian forces are either camped out here or there, or they're in jail. Frankly, I think they prefer freedom," Wolf brought up a profile of the hyena they saw a few hours ago, "This guy, Britch Chucklin, again, dumb name, leads the whole place now. Ace pilot, convincing voice, lots of friends, and plenty of weaponry make this laughing jerk a hard target. Orphaned at the age of ten by a Cornerian Military accident, he wants to kick some Cornerian butt. I hate him; he put me out of work."  
  
"I see that as a good thing," Fox shrugged.  
  
"Well, if we're going to get Krystal back, we should phone the Cornerian Army to get some help," Tom flicked open his holograph projector and pressed speed-dial for General Pepper. Three rings later, the hound's tired face appeared.  
  
"Thomas! It's two in the morning," he yawned.  
  
"Yeah, and we've got a problem. What would you say if we told you there was an enemy base on Corneria?"  
  
"Nuke it," General Pepper yawned again.  
  
"What if we needed something from it?"  
  
"One thing is not enough to endanger thousands of things," Pepper said. Fox quickly shut the holograph down.  
  
"I guess we can't trust him," Fox sighed, "He's too much of a savior for the majority."  
  
"We'll have to go alone," Tom said. Wolf typed rapidly again.  
  
"Oh, I intercepted a message," Wolf yelped happily, "Highly encrypted, but come back in a few minutes."  
  
A few minutes later.  
  
"Ah, your friend is on Fortuna," Wolf pointed.  
  
"Okay, now you can tell the General to nuke the base on Corneria," Fox grinned to Tom. 'We have a flight to catch. Just the two of us.'  
  
**  
  
"Tell me again, why on Corneria are we trying to take on a base single- handedly?" Tom asked as the two Arwings zoomed across space.  
  
"Peppy and Falco will want to come, and they will put themselves in too much danger," Fox shifted his position so he was more comfortable with the staff tied to his back. Fox insisted that Tom should also bring the bow. Along with the bow, there was a leather quiver tied to the string. The quiver fills itself automatically with arrows that just materialize out of thin air. The bow itself, like Krystal's staff, can retract its strings and the wooden frame to make it more compatible to small spaces.  
  
"ETA?"  
  
"ETA: 10 minutes," Tom reported. He was a natural in time.  
  
"Did you bring your jacket?"  
  
"Arctic Foxes can stand the cold, don't worry."  
  
"Worrying is the only thing I'm doing now," Fox glazed at the white, snow planet that Krystal was supposed to be trapped on.  
  
**  
  
"Ow," Fox landed clumsily on his bottom as he tried to jump out. Tom did likewise. The snow was deeper than they had imagined, and they sunk through it quite quickly. The base that Wolf had pointed out was not far away, and the two foxes started right away.  
  
"Climb on," Fox motioned for Tom to climb on his back in a piggyback fashion. They speeded along the trail thanks to the Ruby of Blood.  
  
The base looked something like the Cornerian one on Katina, but a bit smaller in size. There were lots of guards around the place; each holding a big blaster Fox was certain would make them twenty pounds heavier.  
  
"Hey!" Fox called as he dropped an invisible Tom off. 'Don't go anywhere. They'll see your tracks.' Tom nodded to Fox mentally.  
  
"What the-" Fox tackled a lizard down and punched another one in the stomach. They started firing quickly, but Fox dodged the lasers like a breeze. Taking out his own blaster, he shot with accuracy into each of their heads, spilling blood and occasionally gray liquid that can only be brains.  
  
'Go! Shut down all computer systems, but not the lighting.' Fox ordered. He saw small tracks run hurriedly towards the base. Fox grinned. Show time.  
  
Blasting a hole in the metal walls using the staff, Fox charged in, shooting everything in sight. He was really mad. Once in a while, Fox heard an explosion elsewhere in the building that can only mean that Tom was having a good time with the bow.  
  
"Hey, you!" A bear stormed in the office that Fox was trashing. Quickly putting the grizzly in a headlock, Fox started to push his spine. The bear growled in pain, but could not do anything in Fox's grip.  
  
"Where is the prison?" Fox asked, putting on a nice voice to add to the irony that the four hundred pound bear must be experiencing against a mere one hundred-pound fox.  
  
"F-fourth floor," the bear choked out. Fox dropped him and ran to the stairs. A zap was audible as all the computers shut down. 'Thanks, Tom.'  
  
'Sure. This thing is so cool!'  
  
Jumping the staircase six at a time, Fox crashed through the wall on the fourth floor. All the animals cowered in fear at the sight of Fox, but they were ignored as he sped down the halls, occasionally smashing some glass of an office as he passed. Fox skidded to a halt when he saw the word 'Jail' in big block letters in front of a metallic door.  
  
Smashing through with his fists, Fox charged into the door. The whole prison was only one cell and three guards, who were expandable. Once they were down, staining the metal floor and walls with their blood, Fox turned his attention to a blue fox, paws on the cell bars, gawking at Fox.  
  
"Wow, that was quick," Krystal said, "I've only been here for fifteen minutes." She jumped out after Fox bent the bars for her. She hugged him tight and rubbed her furry cheek furiously against his.  
  
"Hey, stop it," Fox chuckled as he felt himself get shocked by the static electricity she was building up, "Come on, let's get Tom and get out of here."  
  
Another second later, Fox had whisked Krystal and Tom out (it was hard to find Tom at first) and dumped them both in the Arwings. Krystal, getting the good side of the argument again, got to sit on Fox's lap for a second time as they zoomed off into space.  
  
**  
  
"You went where?" Peppy dropped his jaw.  
  
"Fortuna," Tom replied, "We know, we should've told you first."  
  
"Told me? You should've dragged me along like you always do!"  
  
"Erm, bad back slows you down, old bunny," Fox shrugged as he dug up the lamest excuse ever created.  
  
"Wow, I hope you get hazard pay," Falco said.  
  
Having have to tell another long story (well, excluding the gems as always) including the part about Wolf, Fox came prepared with drinking water this time. Everyone gathered around again like a bunch of little cubs around a librarian telling a fairy tale and listened intently on what they had to say.  
  
"Say, Tom, you didn't happen to see any of the StarWolf, er, StarHyena team, did you?" Peppy asked.  
  
"No, I don't think so," Tom put his head on his fist and leaned his elbow on the coffee table, making him look like a philosopher. Fox and Krystal also shook their heads.  
  
"It must've been rather romantic, right, Krystal? Your hero saving you for the second time," Katt smiled, showing her white teeth. Krystal looked confused.  
  
"With who?"  
  
"Fox, of course!"  
  
"Him?" Krystal looked at Fox. Her green eyes met his green eyes for a second, "No, not really."  
  
"What is wrong with you foxes?" Katt looked utterly bewildered, "I mean, if Falco saved my life twice, well, I would've been in his bedroom at night, then." Slippy choked on his juice. Falco looked pale beneath his feathers.  
  
"Hey, no way! Even if you did get in, I'd never agree to do such a thing!" Falco harrumphed.  
  
Fox looked at Krystal for a second, and making sure to make a mental barrier, he took notice of her features.  
  
Yeah, she was the same age, same order, same species, but not the same race. What does that matter, anyway? She looked beyond beautiful, and she was pretty funny and nice most of the time. The naive part can be fixed after a few months. Fox slid back on the couch as he thought about the first time that he saw her. Fox wondered if Peppy was going to blurt it out to Krystal.  
  
'Uh, oh, a big mental hand is smashing on my personal space.' Fox thought as he felt Krystal trying to tell him something.  
  
'Hey!' She broke through. 'Why'd you do that?'  
  
'It gets annoying when you read my mind all the time.' Fox shrugged.  
  
'I'm not reading your mind! I was going to tell you about how sweet you were to think of me like that when I was in the crystal.' Krystal sounded hurt. Fox quickly stood up and ran to his cabin. Immediately after he shut the door, he slid down, back against the wall, and started banging his head softly.  
  
'I can make your memories a part of mine and mine yours, so stop hurting yourself. I don't mind people calling me pretty or beautiful, I just mind when people judge my by that.' Krystal hacked into Fox's head for the third time. Fox stopped in mid-bang.  
  
'Oh. I thought you'd hate me.'  
  
'I thought you only saved my life because you needed my help on Dinosaur Planet, but a few months ago, I was proved wrong. You saved me because of the person you are: the hero that rescues anyone no matter what. It shows that you shouldn't judge people until you really know them.'  
  
Fox slid back into the den. Fox racked his brain for something that was bugging him until he realized that the naïve part was already fixed.  
  
**  
  
"Krystal?" Fox peeked into her cabin. It was like Fox's, only that it was bare empty of personal objects except her armor, shirt, and staff in the closet.  
  
"Hmm?" Krystal twisted her head a bit from her bed to look at Fox.  
  
"Do you know where your home planet is?" Fox asked.  
  
"No, not really," Krystal sighed. She must've wanted to take another mid- boring-day nap again, because her sandals were thrown carelessly against the dresser. One landed in, but the other landed on top of the empty wooden rectangle.  
  
"Do you know where your parents died?" Fox tried. Krystal stopped swishing her tail around for a second, but went on as she spoke again.  
  
"Yeah, I do," Krystal suddenly leaped up and tackled Fox to the ground, landing with her knees uncomfortably (for Fox) on his chest, "Ha! You got it! All these miserable years! I never thought of that!" Krystal jumped off of Fox and ran to the cockpit. Fox curiously followed her.  
  
"Hmm? How do you work this thing?" Krystal rapped softly on the screen for the star-map system. Fox pressed a button next to it and a large, but incomplete map of the galaxy showed up.  
  
"Erm, we're here," Fox pointed to a small, blue planet, "Corneria." Krystal thought for a moment, and pointed to a part of the map that was to the left side of the Lylat System. It was the part that Fox tried to discover. Krystal then worked her paw right again to Dinosaur Planet, not far from Aquas.  
  
"Show me the position of the planets a year ago," Krystal demanded. Fox pushed a few buttons on the keyboard and the planets started moving backwards. They lurched to a halt a second later. Dinosaur Planet ended up pointing left from the sun. Krystal traced her paw again to the left, but in the middle of empty space beyond the solar system that Fox named Vulguru.  
  
"Not discovered," Fox said.  
  
"Not for long," Krystal then ran off again. Fox then noticed that she didn't bother to put on her sandals.  
  
**  
  
"Are we getting paid this time?" Falco asked as he strapped himself down for takeoff.  
  
Slippy, preparing again as usual nailed down a bunk bed for Krystal and Katt, but Falco was forced to sleep on the couch because his old room was used for the den.  
  
"If knowledge is payment enough," Krystal answered.  
  
"Aw, crud," Falco mumbled.  
  
"Hey, cheer up. At least there won't be malls for Katt to waste money," Peppy laughed.  
  
"What?" Katt growled.  
  
Fox shook his head and pushed on the speed lever. A minute and a large bang later, they were in space again.  
  
"Slip, get the new warp drive," Fox motioned. Wolf hadn't bothered to give it back. Slippy slid a circuit into the computer and ran off towards the engines. Nearly a second later, he hopped back and sat down.  
  
"Uh, you press this," Slippy flicked a small switch on the computer. What a jerk; he hadn't even let enough time for Katt to get seated again. A split second and some time distortion later, Katt was hurled against the wall, but at least they've arrived.  
  
"You idiot!" Katt hissed.  
  
"Whoops," Slippy cringed as Katt loomed over him.  
  
"I hope you fattened up all right, Froggy, 'cause I'm gonna FRY you!" Katt's head had a huge swell on it. She leaped for Slippy and he ducked for cover and ran for is life.  
  
"That's it," Krystal pointed. There was a green planet close to where they had landed. The solar system had one sun and five planets, and the green one was the second closest. All the others were brown deserts. Fox brought the joystick up a bit and shoved the lever again. Soon, they were looking for a place to land.  
  
"Take that clearing over there, Fox," Peppy said as Katt jumped over his seat after Slippy, who actually had a better endurance when he was scared out of hit wits. Fox touched down easily and opened the hatch door. No sooner than three minutes later, all seven of them were looking around, impressed at the wildlife.  
  
There were huge redwood trees towering high above as well as little berry shrubs around here and there. Everything was green, except a few mountains in the distance and the golden berries that were so big that they threatened to flatten the bushes.  
  
"Wow," Tom peered up at the trees and fell over on his tail. Krystal ran over to one of the bushes and picked a berry. She popped it into her mouth and chewed.  
  
"Any good?" Fox asked.  
  
"Very," Krystal plucked another fat one and bit that one as well. Fox took a small one and nibbled. It was sweet, but not to the extent that it would suck the moisture out of your mouth. It was rather hard, not much different from a crabapple.  
  
"Mmm, not bad," Tom stuffed two into his jaw at once.  
  
"Oh, I wouldn't eat too much if I were you," Krystal smiled as Tom hesitated to fill his snout again, "It's poison to males." Fox spat his out quickly.  
  
"What's that?" Falco pointed to the very edge of the clearing. It looked like something had flattened out on it, a bit like a broken structure. A small one, too.  
  
"That is what we're looking for," Krystal said speeding off. Fox and Tom followed closely. As they ran closer, Fox could make out the burnt remains of what looked to be a stone and wood hut. Krystal's hut.  
  
"Ooh, it's still here," Krystal cleared the two foot wall in a single jump and dug around furiously in the burnt ashes. There was a stone floor beneath it, and Fox could see some blackened remnants of a desk, two chairs, two rough beds, and a small cabinet.  
  
"Hmm?" Tom opened the cabinet and took out some large jars of food, "Yuck, this must be at least twenty years old!"  
  
"Twenty-three," Krystal pointed out as she picked up burnt pieces of parchment on the desk, "Aw, they're too damaged to read." She flipped a few pages over and found a small, unburned map of the planet. She stuffed into the pocket of her pants. Krystal looked over at a small table outside the hut.  
  
"That was the table your parents were sitting in when they were killed," Fox jumped over after her. The table wasn't damaged, but years of sitting out in the weather beat it. A small, checkered, wooden board was sitting on top of it, and on top of the board, there were little pieces of colored wood, much like checkers.  
  
"These are still here!" Krystal took one of the wooden pieces and examined it. It was cleverly waxed, as of the others, and they all had little markings on them. Krystal scooped them all up and shoved them in her pocket, too.  
  
"Hey what's t - AAA!" Tom slid back in horror. Fox spun around and saw what Tom had seen. It was the skeletal remains of two foxes wearing tunics.  
  
"They." Krystal bent over the skeletons. The rain had beat the bones until they were gray and grass grew clumsily around them. They were in the same position: both hands on top of their chests and jaws open slightly.  
  
"Huh." Fox whimpered. Krystal touched the smaller skeleton, probably her mother, and a single tear fell. As Krystal's paw moved away from the skeleton, she bumped into the tunic and a small piece of yellowed paper fluttered out. Krystal picked it up.  
  
"What's that?" Fox asked.  
  
"Erm, a drawing of my staff, I think. It was done with charcoal, so it's hard to read. There's a bow and a sword, too, and there is someone standing beside each of them. The paper is a bit cut off, I think. The pictures are very detailed," Krystal waved the paper in front of Tom, "Does he look familiar?" Tom squinted his eyes to look at the paper.  
  
"That kinda looks like the picture I have of. Me!" Tom snatched the paper away. Fox bent over to have a closer look. It wasn't exactly Tom. The tail on the Arctic Fox was slightly shorter, and the pattern on it was different from Tom's. The tip of Tom's tail had the slightest trace of a gray zigzag, but the one on the picture had the pattern of waves. Besides, the Arctic Fox in the picture was wearing battle armor, and Tom looked a bit to skinny for that. Strangely, the fox beside the staff looked a bit like a male version of Krystal with armor. He had thicker bracelets and a chest plate, but he also had the hoops around his fuzzy tail. There was a close picture representation of Fox with armor on it, too, beside a big broadsword.  
  
"Hey, there is writing on the paper. Wait a second. Um, shoten blaclos hanrato. The wizard, the archer, the swordsman. I think that's rather obvious," Krystal shrugged and stuff the paper away, too.  
  
"Let's go, then," Tom waved to Peppy and the others, who just caught up.  
  
"What?" Falco stared.  
  
"Back to the Great Fox!" Fox ushered.  
  
"You have got to be kidding me." Falco mumbled.  
  
**  
  
"Was there anything interesting on the map?" Fox asked. He had locked the door to his and Tom's cabin again to avoid a nosy Katt butting in to ask something.  
  
"No, just trees and rivers," Krystal shrugged, "There was my tattoo inscribed on it as a north-south marker, but nothing else." Krystal rolled up her gray pants up to her foreleg and showed the star-like picture.  
  
"Hmm," Fox murmured, getting an idea, "What do the tattoos on your arm say?"  
  
"They're just there to tell whoever that is of my race my name and all that stuff. It's way to complicated for a fox with a four-year old idea of what her language means," Krystal said, "My mother just said it says my name. My full name, but I can't make out the last words."  
  
"Too bad." Fox looked closely at the tattoo on Krystal's leg. There was something much more to it than it looked.  
  
"What are you doing?" Krystal started to get the giggles as Fox leaned over and squinted his eyes to see well.  
  
"Uh, I think this is a star map, just more artistic. Wait, I'll copy it," Fox took a page from under his older charts and memos, "When was the last time you groomed your leg?" Krystal burst out laughing.  
  
"Uh, don't get any ideas, Fox," Krystal twitched a bit as Fox covered her leg with the paper and traced the tattoo. She started laughing giddily again as Fox scribbled a little faster. Fox chuckled as he flipped the page off her leg and looked at it closely with Tom.  
  
"Do you see the tiny dots outside the small circle?" Fox pointed. Tom nodded.  
  
"That looks a bit like Zeus' Flame. That big constellation that you can see from the Southern Hemisphere on Katina."  
  
"Yep, and I think that the circle there is where we'll be going next," Fox nodded.  
  
"That fells so weird, getting information I had very near my bottom for twenty-five years," Krystal giggled.  
  
**  
  
An hour passed and Fox and his crew gathered around the cockpit to look at a sight very strange. The planet had been completely blown in half, the two pieces slowly revolving around each other. Cerinia was a planet quite like Corneria, but a little greener. It looked like no one had been living on it for years. Fox decided to land on the one with more cleared land, which meant there might have been more cities before.  
  
Fox, Tom, and Krystal had to fly down on the Arwings because Slippy detected too lush vegetation and not much even ground for the Great Fox to touch down on. Slippy built another Arwing to replace the one that Krystal crashed. With a little help from Rob, of course.  
  
The landing was smooth, and Krystal's flying had improved. Cerinia proved to be a beautiful place for one that had been destroyed. It looked remarkably like the last one that they had been to, with the same redwood trees and berry bushes, but Cerinia had more vines and slimy swamps. There wasn't a fox in sight.  
  
"Whoa!" Tom yelled as he slipped on a rock. As he retained his posture, he fell into a dugout pit, "OW!"  
  
"Now who's the clumsy oaf?" Fox called down, laughing.  
  
As they strolled on, making jokes or falling into unseen pits, they stumbled into a large, brown dirt clearing. It seemed to be perfectly circular.  
  
"Oh, that's ugly." Tom mumbled. Suddenly, as if told to by an unseen force, a strong wind picked up and blew a whole inch of the dirt off, revealing a terrible sight.  
  
"Oh, that is NOT good," Fox's jaw dropped. They were standing before a mass graveyard of fox skeletons poking out of the blown dirt, each wearing a tunic. Fox heard Tom throw up behind him.  
  
"Oh, my goodness," Krystal whispered as she examined a skeleton. It was very small, like it belonged to an infant kit. It had a laser hole shot through its skull. Fox felt a wave of sadness that seemed to emerge from the clearing. Suddenly, the clearing almost gave a whisper of warning.  
  
"What's this? More victims?" A voice behind them barked. Fox spun around and leveled his gun. Fox dropped it in surprise just as quick.  
  
"No way!" Tom said as he dropped his gun as well. Krystal, on the other hand, pulled out her staff and raised it.  
  
"What's the matter, Fox? Too surprised to see your old man?" James McCloud laughed. He was wearing a black leather jacket just like the ones that Andross' ace pilots wore.  
  
"You are a."  
  
"Clone," James finished for him, "Too bad the real James had to waste his life away for some pathetic dog. It's much more fun killing people or enslaving them. I'd say the killing part was much more enjoyable." James jerked his blaster at the graveyard.  
  
"How could you?" Tom asked, shocked.  
  
"Ha! Once these people see you, they start shooting at you. Much more fun killing them rather than making peace, a lot less painful, too. Look!" James pointed to his paw that held his blaster. It had a hole right through it, showing bone and burnt sinew; "Andross was kind enough to give me a body again. Too bad I failed getting the Emerald the first time. Too good that I'm about to succeed this time."  
  
"Fox, get rid of him and let's get out of here!" Krystal turned her head. In that moment, James' clone snatched the Emerald away from her. Krystal gave a yap of shock and swung her staff. James neatly caught it.  
  
"No way-" Krystal screamed as James kicked her in the stomach. Fox fumbled with his dropped blaster, but managed to aim it at the side of James' head as he prepared for a second attack.  
  
"Really, Fox, are you really going to shoot you father after all these years instead of having a little chat?" James laughed. Fox hesitated in pulling the trigger for a second. James' arms flashed in Fox's hesitation. One arm flung the Emerald far away, and the other one, still holding the blaster, fired a shot into each of the three foxes.  
  
Fox, cringing and holding his stomach in the horrific pain, used a millisecond to aim and another millisecond to shoot. James' clone landed in a heap with a shot through the skull two seconds later. It all happened so fast that Fox's head stopped working for a while.  
  
"Shoot!" Tom crumpled down on his knees. He had a shot through his shoulder. Fox himself got hit in the stomach region, probably in the liver where it would take a longer time for him to die. Krystal, on the other hand, got a much worse wound. The laser and gone through the side of her neck and had pierced her main artery. She was already lying on her back on the ground, looking pale beneath her blue fur and the fur itself and the ground was being stained with dark red as her heart kept pumping the blood out.  
  
"Fox." She whispered. Fox quickly knelt beside her. Fox clutched the neck wound to stop the blood flow, but it proved useless.  
  
"Fox! Oh, that's bad! I'll f-find the Emerald," Tom coughed. He ran off quickly into the woods.  
  
'No! Don't go, Kris! Hang on for a second!' Fox frantically shook Krystal's shoulders as she closed her eyes.  
  
'It's far too late, Fox. Don't blame yourself.' Krystal's voice, even through minds, was weak.  
  
'You are NOT dead yet!' Fox yelled angrily. 'Don't say that!'  
  
'Huh! Not dead? You speak the words of a hopeful fool, Fox.'  
  
'A hopeful fool I may be, but a right one I shall prove!' Fox glared at her. She opened her eyes for a second. Krystal's eyes were soft and warm, but her body was going frigid. She was right: she didn't have long to live.  
  
'Don't beat yourself up for it. I would've hesitated if it were my father, too.'  
  
'TOM! Where are you?' Fox called.  
  
'Ha! I got it!'  
  
'GET BACK HERE!' Fox shouted mentally. He wasn't angry at all. He was scared more than anything, more like.  
  
'It's. Too. Late.' Krystal's breaths came in short gasps, and now Fox could hardly feel her pulse.  
  
'No, it's not. It isn't. It isn't.' Fox sighed grievously as Krystal gave a final gasp and closed her eyes. Fox closed his eyes as well as he felt the tears come out. Fox held her close for a long moment to his chest until Tom came crashing through the underbrush.  
  
"Oh, crud." Tom's eyes started watering, too, "Fox, take the Emerald. You've got a nasty hole there." Fox turned slowly, his cheek soaked with salty tears. Fox took the Emerald with a shaky hand and felt again the warmth as his wound recovered. Fox then, although knowing that she's already gone, pressed the Emerald to Krystal's forehead as a final tribute.  
  
Fox suddenly felt the sucking of magic again. Surprised, Fox felt himself get hurled to the ground and he landed with a bump on his tail. He was sure his eyes were not working correctly because he rubbed furiously on them.  
  
'What the.' He couldn't talk either. Fox looked around. He was still on Cerinia, but the scenery was horribly wrong. The whole world had turned the color of a negative picture. Fox could see a black shadow, probably Tom, leaning over. Him! Fox's body was still knelt down beside the dead Krystal, with one paw still clutching the Emerald and the other paw holding her.  
  
What was around Fox was even scarier. Hundreds of thousands of black-robed shadows were staring relentlessly upon him with dark, hollow eye sockets. Fox gasped in horror as he realized they had no flesh on their faces. Some had holes through bones and most were stained with blood. These were the dead Cerinians, the people who Krystal wanted to know about. All this time, they were all dead. Dead for a long, long time.  
  
'Fox?' Someone asked. Fox looked at the vixen that talked. It was Krystal! She was a dark shadow like the rest, but her body still had fur and she was smiling at Fox, and was running up to him. She tackled Fox over and hugged him tightly.  
  
'What's going on?'  
  
'I don't know. I'm dead, I think, and you are here to bring me back.'  
  
'Then lets get out of here.' Fox grinned happily as he pulled Krystal, more flew than walked, to where their bodies were and Fox felt again the sucking feeling of magic.  
  
"Whoa-" Tom reeled back in surprise as Fox regained his senses and jumped up.  
  
"Dead! I told you that you weren't dead!" Fox knelt back down again beside Krystal and held her tight. She looked mildly confused.  
  
"But I was dead," she whispered as she hugged back.  
  
"Okay, break it up, we should go back now," Tom said, awestruck. Fox nodded and helped his blue friend up.  
  
"Are you all right?" Fox asked as he started to walk back, ignoring James' bloody body.  
  
"Uh, my neck is a bit sore." Everyone laughed, not that it was funny, but everyone was relieved. Confused, but a bit more relieved than confused.  
  
**  
  
A/N: I know it's not done. Gimme a few more months and I should get the next one done, which should be the last. Lets see how Fox handles his destiny. 


	4. Who is that fox?

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in Starfox 64 or Starfox Adventures. If I did, I'd be stinking rich and I wouldn't write this. A big sorry to Zoe2000 for kinda stealing her idea about an Arctic Fox. I really had no idea she had one in her stories, too. I only noticed after I was halfway through my story. The same to Foxmerc on the Alben/Aldon thing. Jeez, great minds think alike, eh? Oh, Cathy Hearken, Britch Chucklin, Alexandra Alben, and Thomas White belong to me, so e-mail me if you want to use them in your stories, 'k?  
  
Intro: Okay, setting. One year after the Dinosaur Planet incident. On Corneria, I guess. This is based on the N64/Gamecube setting, which means: Fox and his team are broke (kinda), Fox never met Fara, and General Pepper is not obsessed with suckers (haha). I never finished the game; heck, I don't even have the game; so don't hound my butt for stuff like 'hey, Fox didn't do that' blah, blah, blah. Gimme a break wills ya? But I'd appreciate it if you would send me a formal e-mail about it, and then I would change or update my story about that.  
  
Okay, now on with the darn story.  
  
  
  
"It's good to be alive," Krystal smiled. Having completed their personal mission, the StarFox team, with some grumbling from Falco, returned to hanger sweet hanger.  
  
"It's good to know you're alive," Fox smiled back from across the table.  
  
Everyone cleared out, except for Krystal and Fox, because Slippy wanted to drag the whole crew to watch an opera that he had been waiting to see for a long time. Fox said that he didn't feel well today, so he (along with Krystal, who threatened to roast Slippy if he forced her along) got to stay behind for a few hours, alone.  
  
"Is that trout any good?" Krystal asked. Fox nodded as he pushed the can over to her. Supper wasn't as much fun without Tom or Peppy, but neither was a boring act of singing rhinos.  
  
Krystal, being saved from Fox for the third time, had started to be a lot quieter. Three life traumas are enough to scare the pelt off of any fox. Fox, however, being more strong-willed, endured eight of them without the loss of sanity, and with three of them in the same year.  
  
"I wouldn't be too sure that you're completely sane," Krystal said, reading his mind again, "Who would be sane enough to take on an entire base with only one companion?"  
  
"One invisible companion. And with a magic rock that lets you multiply your strength by ten," Fox shrugged as he gulped down a mouthful of fish.  
  
"There's a lot to you than your looks," Krystal said slowly after an awkward pause. Fox dropped the trout on his fork.  
  
"What?" Fox craned his neck a bit, "oh, uh, I was going to say the same about you." He lied, but it wasn't quite a lie.  
  
"Really? Not many people care about my personality," Krystal stabbed the trout's eye with a knife.  
  
"Did you have a boyfriend before?" Fox asked.  
  
"My travels give me a lot of disappointment. Well, two boyfriends, to be exact," Krystal paused, "One was a red fox from a weird place that I don't remember who only wanted to marry me because it would make him look good. Blue was a noble color on his planet. The other was a fox, well, part fox, part wolf, that liked me because his parents commanded him to. He hated me, really." Fox's jaw dropped.  
  
"You actually had contact with other animals? You sure don't seem like it, wearing only a loincloth and a really flimsy bra for a few decades."  
  
"Knock it off," Krystal grinned, "Yeah, I had contact with foxes. The two of them happened when I was, say, twelve and fifteen. No much contact after that with foxes." Fox's jaw dropped again, this time for real.  
  
"A guy almost married you when you were twelve?" Fox choked on his trout.  
  
"Yeah, so what?"  
  
"That's illegal here," Fox waved his fork around, "You can't marry until you are, erm, I think it's twenty." Now, it was Krystal's turn to drop her jaw.  
  
"I was taught to marry when I reached, well, maturity," Krystal said. Fox choked again on his trout.  
  
"For foxes, that's usually what? Ten years old? Wow, that's messed," Fox coughed.  
  
Krystal shrugged and went on with her fish, licking her plate clean. Fox, being alone, liked to do that personally, and followed suit. Fox then put the dish in the sink and leaned against the counter.  
  
Fox remembered for a second about his first girlfriend and how she came to her terrifying end. Fox counted it as one of his traumas.  
  
**  
  
"Cathy, can you do this?" Fox chuckled as he kicked a hacky-sack into the air and caught it with his snout.  
  
"Watch me!" Cathy the brown, black, and white beagle dog kicked it with the insole of her foot and caught it neatly on her snout, too, "Bill?" Bill gulped. He kicked it and it flew high, but as he raised his head to get it, Wolf pinched him in the belly. Bill opened his mouth for a yell, but the sack of beans landed in his mouth and gagged him.  
  
"Hey!" Bill whined as he spat the yarn bag out, "You jerk!" Bill tackled Wolf playfully on the ground and gave the large gray animal a socket punch.  
  
Fox was nine at the time, nineteen months before Wolf turned his back on him. Fox, Cathy, Bill, and Wolf were walking home from school and over the residential area that is their home. The first had to cross a small bridge before Bill, Fox, and Cathy got to their houses.  
  
"Gotta go!" Wolf jumped up and ran away, will Bill running after him for a few steps before he gave up and rejoined the fox and the dog.  
  
"Ooh, that's not fair," Bill harrumphed. Cathy Hearken laughed heartily. She looked stunning for a little kid. With long, straight, and sleek brown hair, she was a tomboy and followed Fox, Bill, and Wolf around. She was unusually brave, and liked to do really 'gross' stuff. Fox liked her a lot. He had known her for three years when she moved in next door to him. Being a young and naïve kit, Fox had sometimes dreamed about him and Cathy getting married. Fox laughed at the idea today. They had contrasting personalities. Even though, Fox never had a chance to tell her about his feelings.  
  
"Hmm, do you two want to hang out at the river valley?" Cathy challenged.  
  
"The ravine part of it?" Bill asked.  
  
"Where else?"  
  
"There's the water itself," Fox shrugged. Cathy laughed. Her laugh was musical, and it haunted Fox to this day.  
  
"That's boring; I want to climb down the cliff!"  
  
"Uh, sure," Bill said. The ravine was a steep mud cliff to the river. Years of erosion had left the dirt in a peaking cliff. Little kids liked to play beneath it, but Fox had never tried to play above it.  
  
Being a fast runner, Cathy sped quickly away from Fox and Bill, who panted to catch up with her. They were looking at the trees and the houses across the river a second later.  
  
"Wow, that's really cool," Bill shielded his eyes from the bright afternoon sun and walked up to the cliff. Cathy did the same.  
  
"So green!" She said. Fox walked carefully over, too, to see the scene.  
  
Fox couldn't really take inventory of what happened right after that; it happened too fast. It had rained the previous day and the mud and gravel was loose under the long grass. Fox's additional weight caused the weak wall to collapse. Fox, having his father's pilot instincts, caught both Cathy and Bill before they fell, he himself hanging on with his legs, digging deep into the dirt to prevent getting dragged off himself.  
  
"AAAA!" Cathy and Bill shouted together.  
  
"Ugh! What did you two eat for lunch?" Fox panted as he felt his arms stretched.  
  
"Are you okay, Fox?" Cathy asked, getting her calm measures back in an instant, "Can you hang on?"  
  
"Not. For long." Fox grunted.  
  
"Then let me go," Cathy said with a hard face. Fox stared at her.  
  
"It must be at least a hundred feet down!" Fox whimpered. Cathy glared at him.  
  
"It's me or all three of us, now LET GO!" She swung his arm furiously. Fox screamed as he felt his paw slip under her flailing.  
  
"No, no! Don't do-" Fox was never able to finish his sentence. Cathy gave a final swing and dropped down. Fox screamed, and so did Bill, but the beagle remained silent, all the way down. She never felt any pain: her neck had been snapped instantly.  
  
**  
  
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Fox," Krystal whispered as she heard Fox's story telepathically, "That must've been hard for you."  
  
"Yeah." Fox sighed, "I've lost so many people."  
  
"And you have saved so many more," Krystal patted Fox's shoulder comfortingly, "Including mine." Fox raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Three times," Fox pointed out.  
  
"Mmm-hmm, and I'm very grateful for that," Krystal hugged Fox and rubbed her cheek against his. Fox chuckled again as he felt himself get zapped by the static electricity. Fox pried her away.  
  
"Why do you do that?" Fox asked as he remembered how she did that the day that Fox saved her from StarHyena base.  
  
"It's a sign of affection, of course, and besides, it feels good," Krystal chuckled. She annoyed Fox by rubbing again. He flinched as he got shocked again. Fox sighed as he hugged back tight. It did feel good, except for the part with the electricity.  
  
"Hey, I thought I shouldn't have left you two alone," Tom laughed. Fox and Krystal quickly pushed apart.  
  
"It is not what you think," Fox said quickly.  
  
"It's exactly what we think," Slippy giggled as he came in with Peppy. Peppy smiled warmly.  
  
"'It' is a good way to get your mind off the bad things in life," his smile grew bigger, his big front teeth gleaming in the light.  
  
"We're not." Krystal began.  
  
"Yeah, right," Tom clapped a paw on Fox's shoulder, "Way to go, Fox. She is kinda."  
  
"It's not." Fox pushed Tom away.  
  
"It is, it is," Slippy was chuckling his head off. Fox groaned unhappily.  
  
"Well, it's gonna be a long day."  
  
**  
  
"Ooo, back from bed, Fox? Did a certain someone-"  
  
"Knock it off, Falco, or else I'm gonna change the password to the Great Fox and stop giving you all that money," Fox snapped. That shut him up.  
  
".There was reportedly fifty-three dead and two hundred and eighteen more injured in the bombing on Fortuna involving the StarHyena team. Following the bombing, witnesses claim that the evil group of four started chopping down thirty-six more bystanders with a large, flaming broadsword." The dog reporter babbled.  
  
"What?" Fox swung his head in the direction of the television. Falco, Katt, and Tom looked as well.  
  
"This act of terrorism is a sure sign that they want Venom back in power. And on to Mitch with the weather."  
  
"Oh, that is NOT good," Slippy dropped his jaw as he came in as well.  
  
"I thought the General nuked the place on Corneria. How are they still alive?" Tom asked.  
  
"They weren't in the base, probably," Slippy said, pointing out the obvious.  
  
"Ooh, time to die, Leon." Falco muttered.  
  
"Again," Fox finished for him, "We killed them twice already, remember? Once on Fortuna, and the other on Venom eight years ago."  
  
"There were a lot of ships still flying around when that happened. The are most likely clones," Slippy said. Falco nodded.  
  
"And as if killing two hundred of those morons on Area 6 wasn't enough," Peppy called from the kitchen. Fox flipped open his communicator as it started beeping. It was General Pepper.  
  
"StarFox, I need you to-"  
  
"I know, I just heard. You want us to take out the StarHyena team right?"  
  
"How did you guess?" Pepper asked in amazement before he clicked off. A moment later, the communicator started beeping again, startling Fox. Fox flipped it open again.  
  
"Did you hear that? Over-" Wolf began.  
  
"I know, I know. The Fortuna incident."  
  
"Yeah. Hey, do you want me to come with you? I need to stretch my skills after all these years," Wolf suggested.  
  
"Do you have a plane?"  
  
"No. I thought you could give me one."  
  
"Oh, ok. Looks like Slippy has another job on his webbed hands."  
  
**  
  
"Well, I for one don't trust him," Falco mumbled.  
  
"Shut it, birdbrain," Wolf growled, "It's bad enough that I'm stuck with a really dumb jet on this mission." It was true. Slippy didn't have time to paint the new Arwing, so Wolf's jet looked very plain and metallic. Among the many things that an O'Donnel hates, it was having a bland jet.  
  
Flying through the asteroid field again, now with six wingmen at his side, made Fox feel much safer than flying with two, one of them being a complete maniac at shooting.  
  
'Hey! I heard that!' Krystal shouted through minds. Tom chuckled over the radio.  
  
"What?" Katt asked while doing flashy spins in her shuttle.  
  
"Oh, nothing much."  
  
"Whatever. How long 'til the base?" Katt asked.  
  
"Erm. ETA: Twenty minutes. I think I see smaller asteroids up ahead. Blast 'em away!" Tom gave a 'ha' as he pummeled down four of the smaller rocks. Fox gave a competitive grunt as he blasted five more. Krystal shot, but hit Falco twice.  
  
"Wow, I swear that must've reduced his shields by at least thirty percent!" Tom said.  
  
"Shut up!" Krystal slouched in her seat.  
  
Tom was true to his word. Fifteen minutes later, they were soaring through the fluffy clouds of snow towards the town that had been terrorized.  
  
"Hmm, is it just me or is that the StarHyena team up front?" Fox squinted.  
  
"I think it's the second answer," Tom pointed at his radar. Indeed, four Wolfen-class jets were screaming towards them.  
  
"Break formation and engage," Falco commanded.  
  
"Hey, that's my line!" Fox said.  
  
"Oh, well. You know me. I always want to be the leader."  
  
"Shoot!"  
  
"What's wrong? Did ya hurt your poor paws on the steering."  
  
"No, you idiot, shoot!"  
  
"Oh, right," Falco banked sharply and spiraled away from Fox.  
  
"Ah, the infamous StarFox," a hyena, probably Britch, came over the line.  
  
"Ah, the infamous and moronic StarHyena," Fox mimicked. Britch fumed.  
  
"You are going down," Britch pronounced each syllable with a sharp malice.  
  
"Not if you're going down first, you giggling jack-"  
  
"Hey, Wolf!" Leon shouted, surprised, "We weren't expecting your help." Leon tailed Falco and started shooting. Wolf pulled up behind him.  
  
"Of course not. You should've been expecting my hostility," Wolf snarled as he shot the Wolfen jet. He burst the engine and Leon's ship went up in flames, but not before the lizard himself uttered a dirty curse to his former ally.  
  
"What the-" Andrew looked behind him, "Oh, a little pink shuttle. I would suppose that rotten frog got his ship a makeover?" Katt hissed and spat like a, well, angry cat. She shot Andrew furiously with her pink lasers and the goat went down in a ball of fire. Slippy cheered from the Great Fox.  
  
"Yay! He's dead, he's dead," he chanted.  
  
"Ah, Peppy old pal," Pigma sneered, "Back so soon? Aren't ya gonna have a little chat with poor old Piggy?" Peppy growled, which was unnatural for a rabbit. Fox felt his anger rising. The tip of Fox's Arwing slammed into the back of Pigma's and damaged something that started ejecting white clouds.  
  
"I'd rather not, thank you," Peppy said softly, watching from a screen as Pigma suffocated from the damage to his life support system. His ship went smack into a mountain a few minutes later, "Traitor."  
  
"Oh, crap," Britch muttered, watching as his wingmen crashed one by one, "I'm out of here." He ejected out of his jet as Wolf shot it into oblivion.  
  
"Hey, come back here and fight like the filthy coward that you are!" Wolf shouted. Britch laughed an annoying, nasally, high laugh, not unlike Slippy's. His cockpit landed in the snow and he jumped out.  
  
"I got him," Fox said calmly as he bumped down in the snow, too, and started chasing Britch, who was stumbling in the heavy flakes as the top layer of snow collapsed under his weight. Fox was more careful, jumping here and there, catching up with Britch quickly. Knowing that he didn't have far to go, the gray and black spotted hyena turned and pulled out a long sword from the scabbard in his belt.  
  
"Bring in on, McCloud!" He chuckled. Fox drew his blaster gun and shot. Britch easily deflected it with his sword.  
  
"Cheater," Fox mumbled as he kept shooting. I have to get closer. Fox thought as his Ruby glowed red.  
  
"Huh?" Britch looked around confused as Fox did quick laps around him. Britch stopped dead.  
  
"Big mistake!" Fox stopped at the back of Britch's head, pointing his gun right at his brains. Britch must've been quicker than Fox had imagined. With a flick of his paw, Britch's sword turned flame, and just as Fox shot him in the back of the head, the sword swung around and impaled him in the chest. Britch lay dead in the snow, his gray fluids and his blood staining the sparkling white, but Fox did also on his back, the flaming broadsword protruding from his sternum, puncturing his right lung, stealing his air.  
  
"Fox!" Krystal ran over to him. She must've followed him down. Fox coughed weakly.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Save your breath," she chuckled as she heaved the sword out of his chest. Fox flinched, arched his back, and yelped loudly. Krystal clamped his jaws together with her paw as she pressed the Emerald to his lungs. A moment later, the familiar flash of green light met Fox's eyes and he felt better, although still in pain and short of oxygen.  
  
"Lucky I got here, or else we would've had to visit the afterlife again," she stroked Fox's cheek fur softly as he tried to get up. Krystal pushed him down again, "Save your strength. I know what it's like to get shot, stabbed, and sliced. It still hurts, right?"  
  
"Mmm-hmm," Fox sighed.  
  
"It'll be okay in a few minutes. Can you breathe?"  
  
"Hardly," Fox coughed again, "It's really cold. The snow, I mean."  
  
"Aw, poor Fox," Krystal laughed.  
  
"I get enough of that from Falco," Fox pretended to look hurt as he pushed her playfully. Krystal leaned down and rubbed her cheek against his.  
  
"Stop it!" Fox laughed as he got shocked for the third time in two days.  
  
"A-ha! Caught orange-and-blue-pawed yet again!" Tom put his paws on his hips like a police officer. Fox quickly pushed Krystal away, and her him. The effect was the breakage of the top layer of harder snow from melting and freezing again (the melting and freezing makes the top half- inch a tad harder than the fluffy snow at the bottom, making the top support a maximum of two hundred pounds). Fox got pushed under the snow three feet deep.  
  
"It's not what you think!" Fox's voice called, muffled, from the hole.  
  
"Oh, it's exactly what I-" Tom stumbled as he was hit by a snowball from Fox-in-the-snow-hole.  
  
"Hmm, déjà vu." Fox said from the hole.  
  
**  
  
"That is one cool sword," Tom said as Fox lay the sword and scabbard on the kitchen table.  
  
"This is the third and last weapon, I think," Fox examined the scabbard. It had runes on it, "Hmm? Krystal's what does that say?"  
  
"Erm, Ach Hanna. It's something like Flame of Power. Yeah, I'm pretty sure," Krystal handed the scabbard back to Fox and he sheathed the sword in it. Fox then tied the two strings that were attached to the scabbard on his belt.  
  
"You cut a very dashing figure with that thing," Peppy chuckled.  
  
"I know," Fox posed. Everyone laughed.  
  
"Shouldn't we give that to the museum or something?" Slippy asked.  
  
"Are you nuts?" Falco and Wolf exclaimed together.  
  
"I think that head of yours has gotten a bit more hollowed than the last time I checked," Fox rapped on Slippy's skull, "If we give it to them, they won't give it back!"  
  
"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that part."  
  
"Well, anyway, time to go home. Make sure that General Pepper gives you hazard pay," Falco said as he led Katt out the door. Wolf waved as he went, too.  
  
"Um, Kris, I gave you a bank account when Wolf foxnapped you, so, if anyone asks, your last name is Blue, okay?" Fox asked.  
  
"Krystal Blue. Ugh, that sounds like Thomas' name," Krystal looked at Tom, who pretended to reel back in shock and hurt, "But it's fine."  
  
"Oh, I'm beat. I'm gonna go to bed now," Peppy yawned and walked out. Slippy and Tom followed. Krystal held Fox back for a moment.  
  
"Now, just to make sure; I owe you only two lives now, right?" Krystal asked.  
  
"Yeah, and don't forget it! I have some extra credit that you have to burn off," Fox laughed. Fox thought for a moment and threw off his metal helmet, then hugged Krystal and rubbed cheeks. This time, he didn't get shocked. Krystal, however, was stunned.  
  
"I thought you'd never do that," she smiled.  
  
"I knew it! I KNEW it!" Tom shouted happily from the doorway. Fox and Krystal pushed away quickly again.  
  
"It's not what you think," Fox said.  
  
"Oh, it's exactly what I think," Tom laughed.  
  
"Oh, jeez, this is a vicious cycle," Krystal muttered.  
  
"Does it ever end?" Fox asked.  
  
**  
  
It was just another leisurely day on the Great Fox, with the money flowing in and peace restored. Fox felt a lot better now that Pigma was dead again. It meant that Fox didn't have to deal with that traitor until the next time he got cloned.  
  
It seemed like Wolf was about to get arrested when General Pepper and three of his special guards showed up the other day. Wolf was munching on supper with Fox and Tom when they stormed in. Wolf hid under the table until General Pepper showed him the Medal of Honor that he was supposed to get.  
  
Krystal became a bit louder again, and that was good, since Fox hated when she didn't want to talk. Before, Krystal didn't say a thing except a simple "Uh-huh" or "Uh-uh" to questions that Fox asked. Now, she was all happy again and went into more detailed answers like "Yeah that's great" or "Ugh that's just wrong".  
  
Peppy had his birthday the day after they came back from Fortuna and everyone gave him a more formal party, remembering that Tom went screaming down the corridors when Krystal popped out of the door and shouted "HAPPY BIRTHDAY".  
  
Fox went a few days without getting zapped from Krystal, just because they didn't save each other's lives. Fox thought Krystal owed him enough and decided that he wouldn't save her from utter death unless she really needed help. Fox wondered for a minute about the irony of that promise.  
  
"Hey, McCloud, whatcha thinking?" Wolf sat down on the chair opposite Fox and puffed out his chest. He was wearing the Medal of Honor.  
  
"Can it, O'Donnel. I got about sixty of those," Fox whacked his knife on his toast. Wolf's chest seemed to get smaller for a second.  
  
"And I got about six hundred from Andross."  
  
"Yeah, but that's the evil emperor that wants to kill everyone, right?"  
  
"Good point," Wolf shrugged and stole Fox's toast. Fox growled a bit and got another piece.  
  
"Wolf, do you remember Cathy?" Fox asked.  
  
"Who?" He said through a mouthful of bread and butter.  
  
"Cathy Hearken!"  
  
"Oh, her. Uh yeah, I think. She's that cute beagle we hung out around, er, grade four. Right?" Wolf waved his stolen toast around.  
  
"Yeah. Remember how she died?" Fox looked up. Wolf paused.  
  
"Broken neck. So?"  
  
"Ah, this is gonna sound weird, but how long did it take me to get over her death?"  
  
"Uh, dunno. You were talking about her every day for about a year," Wolf winced as he accidentally jabbed himself with a butter knife.  
  
"Whoa. What's it called when you get that really weird tingling in your stomach when you see a person?"  
  
"Em, a heart attack?"  
  
"I think that's pretty close," Fox said sarcastically.  
  
"Nervousness?"  
  
"Yeah, that's it. And why do you get nervous?"  
  
"Fear? Excitement? Oi, I don't know."  
  
"Guess!"  
  
"Okay, okay. Erm. Love?"  
  
"Hmm." Fox paused for a second, then jumped up and ran away, leaving his second piece of buttered toast on his plate. Wolf shrugged and took that one as well.  
  
"Hey! Fox, Fox! I planted a listening bug on Bill!" Slippy burst in the door; nearly whacking Fox in the head with a thing he was holding as Fox tried to get out. Slippy was obviously very excited because he was squeaking like an old door hinge.  
  
"So?" Wolf asked.  
  
"Bill's with Colonel Alben for breakfast!" Slippy waved a radio around. Fox and Wolf leaped for it. Fox got it first and turned it on. Bill's voice came over and everyone kept quiet.  
  
"Good morning, Alex."  
  
"Mmm, hi, Bill."  
  
"I made toast."  
  
"Oh, you're so sweet when you're nice to me."  
  
"Well, that's you."  
  
After that, there were a few kissing sounds and Slippy fake-retched.  
  
"Another one, please? I haven't loved anyone for a few years."  
  
"Aw, come on, Bill. You still owe me for last night."  
  
"Yeah, I think I fell asleep right after. It was so tiring."  
  
Fox, Slippy, and Wolf stared at the radio as Fox put it on the kitchen table. Fox exchanged glances with Wolf and they both tried to cover their laughter by stuffing paws into snouts.  
  
"Hmm, who knew nailing up drywall was such hard work?"  
  
Slippy turned it off and let out a long 'Oh'.  
  
"Ha! Our Bill! Imagine that."  
  
"Oh, I'd rather not talk about it," Wolf laughed, "I think I'm gonna be sick."  
  
**  
  
"The mechanism is almost complete, sir."  
  
"That's good. Did you perfect the brainwashing process of the chip?"  
  
"Yes, sir, but there would be a few things that he could still remember. Vital things, like talk or walk."  
  
"Of course. Or else what use would he be? If he can't pilot for us, what good is he then?"  
  
"The chip had been made to stay in one place."  
  
"And why is that?"  
  
"That way, the chemical release would be regulated, and therefore our enemy wouldn't forget everything or forget too little."  
  
"What happens if the chip is removed?"  
  
"The chemicals would stop, and the host would slowly regain memories."  
  
"How long until they are all back?"  
  
"That depends. It takes usually from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the type of person."  
  
"McCloud is a stubborn one. He shouldn't take more than a few seconds. I'll just pray that his friends don't find out."  
  
"They wouldn't expect a thing. They'll just think that Fox went nuts and just wanted some more killing done."  
  
"That's the best case scenario. Nonetheless, Caiman, good job. You know that praise doesn't come easily out of me."  
  
"Thank you, sir," the frog turned and went out the door, hoping that Andross' plan would work out.  
  
**  
  
"Now, Tom, you are going to tell us where your parents are or else I'm gonna slice you to bits," Krystal waved her staff threateningly. Tom just laughed harder.  
  
"Oh, come on, Thomas. It's almost tradition that we would like to see the parents of a new member," Peppy said. Tom, if it was possible, laughed even harder. His face turned scarlet red beneath his fur.  
  
Peppy was right. Every new member of the StarFox team must show the rest of the team who his or her parents are. Katt, on one paw, had dragged everyone to Zoness for a few days the previous week. She stayed quiet all the way, and the reason became apparent. What they ended up in was a small cemetery. Her parents had both been killed. They were killed during the first wave of attacks to Zoness about ten years ago. Katt, age 12, hijacked a Venomian plane after she saw her parents murdered in front of her eyes and turned it into her pink shuttle as it is today.  
  
Wolf's parents were also dead. They were killed when their ship to Fortuna had been shot down accidentally by an ignorant Cornerian pilot who disobeyed orders. Wolf was stuck living with a pair of mice since he was eight years old.  
  
"Aw, shut up!" Fox said, clamping his ears together as Tom howled with laughter.  
  
"My real parents," he managed to gasp out, "Oh. Ha, ha, ha, ha."  
  
"Yes, yes?"  
  
"They're both, well, Arctic foxes. Heh, living under gravestones over five million light years away on a planet that has been totally obliterated!"  
  
"Uh, that's not funny," Slippy said bleakly.  
  
"Nor is it possible! That's too far," Krystal shook Tom's shoulders as he leaned against a wall, shaking with laughter.  
  
"Yes it is, if you've been living on a ship with hyperdrive capabilities since when you were a one year old kit! It's funny because. I though the two crewmen of the ship, both males, were my parents! Ha! For over ten years I thought that!"  
  
"Wow. Do you even know your parents?" Fox asked. Tom stopped laughing quickly.  
  
"My story is a bit like Krystal's. A crazy scientist murdered my parents, and after, the scientist blew up my world. I don't know where it is, and I don't have a star map on my leg."  
  
"I thought your dad gave you your necklace for a birthday present," Fox said.  
  
"Oh, I lied. I stole it from my ship's dead commander when Venomian units attacked it. I stole a shuttle and got out when I was, say, twenty. We happened to pass by the Lylat, so I landed on the bluest planet I could see. I have lived on Corneria since."  
  
"This is messed up." Fox mumbled.  
  
"I know," Tom chuckled.  
  
"We have a lot in common, then," Krystal said seductively as she leaned her shoulder towards Tom.  
  
"Erm, yeah, sure," he said as he backed off. There were some bits of long chuckling across the room.  
  
"Ah, Fox, I see that you're not laughing."  
  
"Shut up, Slippy."  
  
**  
  
"When can we start?"  
  
"We can start tomorrow, sir. I can just inject the chip in Fox with a syringe when he's on the streets. He'll never know what hit him."  
  
"Good, good. You will receive a prize when you get back, Caiman."  
  
"Thank you, sir. You are too kind."  
  
"Oh, to you, maybe, but not to the people of the Lylat once Fox obeys my every command. I can taste the tainted blood of their veins already."  
  
"You are a very evil and sadistic maniac, sir."  
  
"Why, thank you, Caiman!"  
  
"Of course, sir."  
  
"Did I reward you for cloning me again yet?"  
  
"I don't think so, sir."  
  
"Aw, cut the 'sir' crap. I think I like 'your majesty' better."  
  
"Of course, your majesty."  
  
"That's a lot better."  
  
**  
  
"Can you go shopping for food again, Fox? I think Falco cleaned us out yesterday," Peppy sat down on a couch.  
  
"Sure thing, Peppy. I'll be back in a flash," Fox put on his jacket and went outside.  
  
It was a nice day. The warm sun was out with a refreshing breeze. Fox gave a 'eh' nonchalantly and decided to walk instead of taking Wolf's old car. That museum artifact was getting really busted up.  
  
Birds sung (the wandering bards with stereos playing rock music in their wings, anyway) and the streets bustled with activity. There were so many people going this way and that, Fox nearly got trampled.  
  
As he neared the general store, Fox saw a familiar green toad walking by. Shrugging it off, as his memory wasn't working too well, Fox went by without a word. Suddenly, something sharp poked him in the right shoulder. Fox looked back. The green frog was gone.  
  
"Ow," Fox looked at his shoulder. There wasn't anything bleeding, so Fox decided not to worry about it. Entering the general store, he racked his brain for what he had came shopping for. A moment later, he was wondering what his name was. Fox felt himself get dizzy as he was dragged out by a green thing that he thought he had seen just a second ago.  
  
**  
  
"Ugh, I'm starving. Where's that orange-butted, absent-minded fox?" Peppy mumbled after an hour of waiting.  
  
"Wow, you can get pretty cranky when you're hungry, old rabbit," Krystal giggled as she set down a plate of old carrots in front of the graying hare. Peppy picked one up and nibbled a bit. It was a bit dry.  
  
"Mmm? How long has this been sitting on the counter?" Peppy asked. Krystal picked up the can and read it.  
  
"Uh, today's the 16th, so this thing has been on the shelf for. Three months over the expiration date."  
  
"Ack!" Peppy spat the orange pieces out, "Oh, I'm gonna murder Fox for this!"  
  
"Yeesh, talk about delirious of hunger," Tom chuckled. His stomach suddenly gave out a loud rumble, "Hey, where is Fox, anyway?"  
  
"Oh, you two! I'll go to the store and find him," Krystal slid on a cloth jacket and walked out.  
  
"You better hurry! I don't think Peppy's going to like my flies," Slippy called after her after gulping down another spoonful of the insects. Shoving his can towards Peppy, he said, "They're really good with hot sauce."  
  
"Aaargh!"  
  
**  
  
"Mr. McCloud? No, I don't think he came by today. You usually remember those things, so I'm pretty sure," the raccoon storekeeper answered when Krystal asked him where Fox was.  
  
"Oh? Is there another store that he might've gone to?" She asked politely.  
  
"I don't think so. Mr. McCloud really likes my tuna, so I'm pretty certain that he wouldn't go anywhere else," the raccoon, Mr. Spiraltail, grinned. Krystal grinned back warmly.  
  
"Sorry to bother you, then," Krystal waved a good-bye and pushed the door open, "Hmm, I don't think he's that forgetful." Krystal mumbled to herself, thinking about Fox. 'Oh, I'm so stupid! Fox?'  
  
'Uh?'  
  
'Fox, where are you? Peppy wants his carrots, I think! Ha! He called you a orange-butted, absent-minded vulpine.'  
  
'Who is Peppy?'  
  
'Ah, knock it off, Fox.'  
  
'Knock what off?'  
  
'Cut the smart Alec stuff and come back to the hanger.'  
  
'What hanger?'  
  
Krystal growled angrily. 'Come on, Fox!' Silence. Krystal growled again and stormed off into the store again to buy food.  
  
**  
  
"Who am I?" He asked. He was in a large metal-walled lab. There were flasks and monitors on the tables, the counters, the cabinets, and even on the floor. The lighting was a bit of, since there was only one bulb hanging from the ceiling.  
  
He looked at his paw. The paw was a dull orange. He looked at his tail as he grabbed it. It was orange, too. A frog appeared in the doorway opposite where he was sitting. He noticed as well that he was sitting in a small, metal chair.  
  
"Regulate the chemical control now," Caiman heard through his radio. The fox didn't hear.  
  
"Your name is William Robins. Don't you remember me?" Caiman was sure to put on a convincing tone. William shook his head. William examined his clothes. He was wearing a green jumpsuit with a cloth jacket. The jumpsuit looked like it had a tag ripped off of it.  
  
"Who are you?" William asked.  
  
"I'm Caiman, your best friend!" Caiman said, shocked, "You must've had some concussion. It wiped out all your memories!"  
  
"It must've. Where am I?"  
  
"Oh, it looks like I'll have to start all over again," Caiman sighed, "You are in an underground lab on Corneria. Remember that planet?"  
  
"Yeah, it's where I live," William turned his attention to Caiman. He was wearing a black leather jacket with black jeans. He had a red cap on that read 'A'.  
  
"Okay, good. We are soldiers that work for Venom, working on a case to kill the assassins of Emperor Andross."  
  
"Andross," William repeated. That name rang a bell.  
  
"Yeah. We're working undercover. We need to seek out a blue fox, a white fox, an old, gray hare, a pink cat, a blue bird, a gray wolf, and a green frog. Well, not me! We need to kill them all. They are traitors," Caiman said. William looked up suddenly.  
  
"Those animals colors sound familiar."  
  
"They should. They were once our friends, but now, they are our enemies. Anyone who calls you Fox is a traitor. Anyone who calls you McCloud is a traitor. Those were your codenames, remember?"  
  
"Yeah, sort of," William shrugged. Caiman gave him thumbs up.  
  
"Now, grab a gun and let's go find those morons!"  
  
**  
  
Krystal grunted as she tried to carry all five of the bags by herself. It wasn't well going, and the tuna almost spilled.  
  
"I hope Fox got back all right," she mumbled to herself as she saw the hanger door. Walking in, she saw that someone had already opened that hatch, "Oh that was nice of Peppy. I guess he's getting really impatient. Wow, he missed breakfast, and now it's time for lunch." Krystal said as she looked at the watch that Fox gave her a few days ago.  
  
Climbing in carefully, Krystal walked slowly up the steps and into the kitchen. A loud groan made her drop all the bags.  
  
"Krystal," Tom wheezed. He had a laser hole through his chest. Peppy was on the floor, as well as Slippy, unconscious. They were all shot in the torso.  
  
"Who did this?" Krystal shouted as she pressed the Emerald to each of their wounds.  
  
"Fox did!" Tom moaned as the hole cleared up.  
  
"What?" Krystal asked as she attended to Peppy and Slippy. Blood was flowing freely from the wounds, and that meant that they were fresh. Krystal almost slipped on the red liquid when she was rushing to Slippy. Blood was everywhere.  
  
"He went nuts! He came back with a frog, and they shot us! I think they took the sword, too."  
  
"It couldn't have been Fox."  
  
"It was. He had his jacket and jumpsuit. The Ruby was on his chest, too," Tom coughed as he straitened up, "I think it's on the security camera, if you don't believe me."  
  
"Let's see, then," Krystal dragged Tom off into the cockpit.  
  
Tom, still winded, punched in a few buttons and a color movie appeared on the screen. There was Fox, in his helmet and suit, with a green and ugly frog. They quickly shot Tom first, then Slippy, then Peppy after Peppy talked for a while. They didn't make out the words; the movie had no sound.  
  
"No."  
  
"Yeah," Tom looked at the floor. When he looked up again, Krystal had tears in her eyes.  
  
"That is not Fox. It must be a mistake. I know Fox and that. That. That is Fox," Krystal sobbed. Tom put a paw on her shoulder as she cried softly.  
  
**  
  
"Wonderful, William! Three down, five more to go!" Caiman clapped his hand on William's back, "Now didn't it feel good to get rid of the traitors?"  
  
"You know what?" William looked up as Caiman drove the hover car from the murder scene quickly, "As long as they were bad, that felt real good."  
  
"Way to go, way to go," Caiman smiled. Andross was going to be very happy with him.  
  
**  
  
Krystal waited until everyone was asleep on the Great Fox, then she got her staff, clamped on her bracelets, and headed out. It was going to be easy to find that traitor. All she had to do is scan his memories. Tom can't come; he was still hurt. No one must know; they will stop her. The whole idea was beginning to sound impossible for Krystal.  
  
Krystal decided to steal Wolf's car, just because it was a lot quieter than hover cars. Getting the hang of the controls after she banged into a few obstacles like trees or rocks, she sped off to the east, toward Andross' secret lab.  
  
**  
  
"Good job, Caiman," Andross whispered in the control room. The lab itself was divided into three parts: A living space, the lab itself, and a control room. William was currently in the living space. Caiman was with Andross in the control room. The entrance door to the elevator shaft was beside the living space.  
  
"Yes, but I think I detected a fault in my design. I guess I was too hurried, I didn't have time to make the system electric-proof. A shock can electrocute the whole chip."  
  
"No matter. I just need to kill five more of those idiots, and then Fox McCloud will help me rule the Lylat."  
  
"Hmm, a good and simple plan always works best."  
  
"Right you are, Caiman. Your reward will be here shortly. Is ten thousand credits enough to quench your thirst for wealth?"  
  
"More than enough, your majesty."  
  
"Heh, heh, yeah, suck it up, Caiman."  
  
"You are very cruel, your majesty."  
  
"I know. Go get something to eat, then. I think I made a sandwich earlier in the lab."  
  
**  
  
Creeping slowly toward the strange cave, Krystal readied her blaster gun. The cave itself was small and dry, and it ended shortly in an elevator door. Knowing that Fox would know of her presence if she used the elevator, Krystal forced open the door and climbed down the shaft itself.  
  
**  
  
"Mmm, Andross outdid himself on this one. I wonder where he got the pickles." Caiman muttered to himself as he munched happily on the large sandwich. Little did he know that a blue fox crept up behind him and readied a knife.  
  
**  
  
"Ugh, this guy eats like a pig," Krystal murmured as she cleaned off the knife on her shirt. Caiman, as his nametag said, didn't bleed a lot when she slit his throat. The poor moron didn't even have time to look at his killer. Krystal got herself up again and turned around.  
  
"I got ya!" William leaped at her and tackled her to the ground. Jerking her blaster away from her, he pulled her up by the neck and put her in a half nelson.  
  
"Let go," Krystal wheezed, totally helpless at what the orange fox was doing to her. Krystal coughed in a strangled way. William loosened his grip a bit.  
  
"I like it better when my prisoners are alive," he hissed in her ear as he shoved her along to the control room.  
  
"Fox, what are you doing?" Krystal managed to whisper through confined air.  
  
"My name isn't Fox!"  
  
"Yes it is! You're Fox McCloud! Have you gone completely insane?" Krystal wriggled a bit as William loosened his grip a bit more. He was going at a quick pace, his foot catching on her heel as he strode along.  
  
"Are you insane?"  
  
"Let go, Fox. You can't be like this," Krystal felt a tear roll of her cheek.  
  
"Stop calling me that! My name is William!"  
  
"You have gone mad," she said in a low tone. The door to the control room opened and Fox pushed her in. Andross turned in his rotating chair.  
  
"Ah, what a unpleasant surprise! We don't have jail cells, so I guess it would be a Venomian tradition to drink the traitor's blood and burn them alive. But, I'm busy," Andross turned back to his computer, "Too bad Caiman had to go so soon. Oh, William, the torture tools are in the cabinet on the other side of the room. I think I could be able to hear her screams, but insult her louder so I can laugh, okay?"  
  
"Fox. They've brainwashed you," Krystal whispered. Her quiet cries echoed off the dimly lit, metal walls. The light came from the computer only.  
  
"I don't know what you are talking about," William said as he clamped one of Krystal's paws to a handcuff nailed to the overhang of pipes. William unsheathed his sword and Krystal shuddered as she heard the metallic ring of death. Coming up behind her, William touched his cheek on the right side of Krystal's head. The flat edge of the sword was raised beside her left cheek and Krystal felt the cold metal against her fur.  
  
"Fox, you don't know what you are about to do!" Krystal cried, "Let go!"  
  
"I do know what I'm doing: Getting rid of a traitor," William smelled Krystal's fur. She must've taken a shower before; she smelled a bit like rosemary, "It's a shame a beautiful vixen like you should go to waste. I kinda like you."  
  
"I'm not a traitor, Fox," Krystal whimpered as William nicked her neck with the blade.  
  
"They all say that," William's tongue darted out and tasted the drop of blood that came out, his cheek still touching hers.  
  
"Fine, kill me, but make it quick," Krystal whispered, almost silently, in William's ear. She slowly rubbed her cheek against his; "You're not you, I know that." William suddenly felt himself get shocked by the static electricity and flinched. He didn't say a word as he turned back to where Andross was sitting with his back to them. He walked over.  
  
"It's a shame Caiman wasn't here. He would've enjoyed the screams of agony," William said.  
  
"Yeah. I should go and say on how much he's actually missing out. I think I'll clone him."  
  
"No don't. There's only one good way to tell him and one good place to be," William said as he silently raised his sword, "And that is in person and in hell!" Fox screamed as he plunged the sword into Andross' neck and severed his spinal cord. Andross hung limp and his blood stained the chair. Heaving the sword out again, Fox jabbed his shoulder with it and dug a finger in the wound. Surprisingly, he didn't flinch in pain during the whole ordeal, and he flicked out a small, oval shape that was no bigger and a grain of rice from his cut.  
  
"Fox?" Krystal asked from the other side of the chamber.  
  
"Yeah. Too bad I learned to read minds, too," Fox spat on Andross' corpse and sliced Krystal's handcuffs with his broadsword. He placed the small bug in a vial he found in his pocket, "Slippy would want to see this thing."  
  
"He brainwashed you. I told you that!" Krystal jumped up and hugged Fox tight. She held him so hard that he couldn't breathe. She quickly let go, "You are back to being McCloud again, right?"  
  
"Uh, yeah. Read my mind, if you want to make sure," Fox smiled. Krystal hugged him again.  
  
"How did you learn to do that?"  
  
"Um, I don't know. I think you just stretch your mind. It came a bit naturally after all those times you scanned my memories," Fox shrugged. Krystal took off his helmet and threw it away. She rubbed hard on his cheek.  
  
"I don't know what to do. Laugh or cry."  
  
"You can do both at the same time, you know," Fox looked deep into her eyes for a moment. He tried very hard not to crack up.  
  
"Oh, don't think this is the start of a relationship, Fox," Krystal frowned, "Don't think. Know." Suddenly, she pressed her lips against his. She held it there for a second, then let go slowly.  
  
"This isn't the most romantic of places, you know," Fox smiled. Krystal nodded and led him out, one paw on his shoulder and vise versa.  
  
**  
  
"But you still shot me," Slippy whined. The bug explained everything, and everyone forgave Fox for nearly killing them all. The story was long, and for the third time, Fox made everyone sit on the couches and listen quietly.  
  
"That's good, though. Real good," Falco patted Fox in the back, "Who doesn't want Slippy dead?"  
  
"HEY!"  
  
"Sorry for that laser hole in your back, Peppy," Fox grinned.  
  
"Oh, I'm fine. Actually, after Krystal's special medicine, my back pain is gone," Peppy sighed. Krystal lied, of course, to everyone about how she saved Peppy, Tom, and Slippy's lives.  
  
Fox smiled at Krystal, and she smiled back from the other couch. Secrets were kept, always. Even when they block people you trust from vital things, just incase they go nuts on you.  
  
**  
  
A/N: Too bad the romance part didn't come out well. I think I should write another story about Fox and Krystal. I am done and thank you for reading. 


	5. Years begone: The lost prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Er, yeah, in the story, I mean. Except for the parts that you wouldn't recognize. Then, I own them. Tell me if you're gonna use 'em in your stories, please, or else I'll cut off your head and stick it on a long pole for everyone to see.  
  
Intro: Oliver McCloud is Fox's great-grandfather. You should read my first story, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, to actually understand the plot. It explains a lot more about where Fox, Krystal, and Tom came from, but not much else. I was a bit bored when I wrote this, so forgive me. It definitely isn't one of my good pieces, and I should've thrown it in the trash (my computer's Recycle Bin), but this was written for EXPLANATIONS, but it doesn't even do that well. Read, but ya don't have to.  
  
  
  
"You do not, I repeat, you do NOT own this ship alone, Oliver!" Tania shouted. The striped-forehead vixen was getting pretty heated up over nothing. Well, that's Tania.  
  
"Hey, I just wanted to see how the walls looked if they were pale green. I think they look a lot better," Oliver blushed. He had modified the walls to make it a greenish color using the computer. Too bad he didn't know how to fix it.  
  
"Grr, I am going to slice you alive," Tania bared her claws. Oliver shrank in fear into a corner, green now, instead of Tania's favorite, orange.  
  
When Oliver first met Tania, he fell in love, but that was changed significantly as she revealed her personality. She was more of a control freak; she wanted everything her way. Oliver had chosen her for a partner because she was the best pilot for a few thousand light years, not because of her sleek, orange fur, her bright blue eyes, her curling brown locks of hair, dangling a few inches over her shoulders, or her stunning shape of body.  
  
Oliver, or rather, his and Tania's ship, the Shenandoah, was named after the famous voyager song. The ship itself was an overlarge shuttle with a kitchen, a bathroom, a cockpit, and two rooms. Not much, but habitable, for Oliver, anyway.  
  
Oliver was basically a mercenary, getting a few calls here and there, rescuing diplomats or queens. Tania teamed up with Oliver a year ago and they both bought the Shenandoah out of their life savings, not that they had much; both of them had no families to go to because relatives were either dead or lost in space.  
  
Oliver had wanted to be a pilot since he was a kit. Being one of the Striped Ones or as his grandfather put it on his deathbed, Oliver was born to be adventurous, but he had also been born the runt of the litter of five. Turning twenty-five the next week, Oliver still was a few centimeters shorter than Tania. She loved to poke fun at him for that. Tania, coincidentally, also was of Oliver's kind.  
  
"Come on, Tania," Oliver said in his average-toned voice, "I think I can ask the mechanic at the next port that we're going for to fix it for us."  
  
"Humph! I doubt it," Tania crossed her arms. Tania herself had a tone a bit lower than most females. That gave her the edge in arguments: Her horrifically angry voice every time she spoke.  
  
Oliver sighed miserably and got up. His blue T-shirt and pants were wrinkled from the pointless fight and he straitened them up. Tugging at his white jacket a bit and re-adjusting his pilot gloves and boots, he looked up to meet Tania's angry eyes.  
  
"I think we have more to worry about than the color of our walls, Tania," Oliver said, his tail swishing idly. Her tail, a bit bushier than his, wrapped itself around his neck and tightened.  
  
"Walls are important! They divide up our space! The keep you from peeking in on me while I change!"  
  
"Did I ever do that?" Oliver raised his eyebrows over his green eyes.  
  
"Once," Tania smoothed out her red T-shirt and pants.  
  
"Yeah, but that was by accident," Oliver blushed again, remembering how he bumped into Tania's room while he was really sleepy. He got lucky, as he didn't see a thing. If he did, Tania would've smashed his skull on the wall until he forgot everything, literally.  
  
"Well, how do I know that?" Tania's tail tightened on his neck. Oliver brushed it aside softly. Oliver would never retaliate to Tania, no matter how dumb she was being. Oliver could never hurt Tania, and secretly, he knew that she wouldn't ever hurt him either.  
  
"Because I never lie," Oliver smiled sweetly. Tania stopped.  
  
"Don't do that. It's so freaky."  
  
"I know!"  
  
**  
  
One thing that Oliver had managed to keep from Tania was his ability to read minds. Oliver can scan anyone's memories for what they want with them. If they were a fake, Oliver would know.  
  
Oliver could fly the Shenandoah better than anyone else, except Tania, maybe. They couldn't afford smaller shuttles to double as interceptors ships, but that was okay. The Shenandoah had very powerful lasers, and it could maneuver very well. That's what made Oliver the money in the mercenary business.  
  
Right now, Oliver had been asked to go to Cerinia, a place that he was moderately familiar with, and rescue the princess from her kidnappers. The princess was only three years old, so it was vital that Oliver made sure that the kidnappers didn't hurt her. The king and queen wouldn't need Oliver's help if the kidnappers didn't have the really big cannon guns. The king's staff, although very powerful in magic, wasn't enough to save his daughter.  
  
Oliver touched the Flame of Power, the mystical sword that his late father had left him, on his belt. Tania was jealous of Oliver because she was stuck with a weak blaster pistol. To tell the truth, her aim was terrible. Oliver, on the other paw, could use the sword to fire fireballs and hit an enemy a mile away.  
  
Oliver distinctively remembered his last visit to Cerinia. That time, he had to rescue the queen and she didn't trust him when he came up to her jail cell. She kicked him hard in the shins, and Oliver still had the claw scar to prove it.  
  
"Hey, runt, I think we will land in about an hour. Sorry about yesterday. I guess I didn't have the right to burst at you like that," Tania sat on the bed beside where Oliver lay.  
  
"Oh, it's fine. I know how you like your things," Oliver threw a plastic ball into the air and caught it again, "And do I ever!"  
  
"Well, thanks for fixing it, anyway."  
  
"Sure."  
  
"I'll be in my room if you need me," Tania got up and left, closing the door behind her. Oliver stared at the door where she had been just a second before. In the whole year that they had been working together, Tania had never said where to find her when she was needed. Oliver shook his head in disbelief as he though that her voice had the sarcasm removed from it for a second.  
  
**  
  
"Welcome, Mr. McCloud and Ms. Vulpon! I would think that you know what I want you to do?" King Quickpaw said it as more of a statement than a question.  
  
"Of course, your highness," Oliver bowed, his nose nearly touching the red velvet carpet.  
  
The king had done some furnishing since the last time Oliver came. The long marble corridor was decorated with more tapestries and ornament weapons. The tapestries themselves showed the warriors and heroes of Cerinia. Among the overlarge pictures was Oliver and Tania themselves. Oliver wielding his large, flaming broadsword and Tania was doing a cute pose quite unlike her personality.  
  
"The kidnappers are said to be camped out to the west of the main city walls. Be careful, McCloud. I wouldn't want my best mercenary to be killed by a few bandits," King Quickpaw rumbled in his deep voice. The king's robes were a royal purple, and some servants were fanning him from the hot summer heat. His long, white beard being stroked by his graying paws as he spoke.  
  
"Yes, sire," Oliver bowed again and exited the long corridor. Tania was waiting for him outside, flirting with a few of the young palace guards.  
  
"Oh, Oliver! Did they finish that carpet that was supposed to have our pictures on it?" She asked.  
  
"Yeah, and you don't want to see it," Oliver muttered in her ear, "Come on. The king says the bad guys are beyond the west wall." Tania rolled her eyes.  
  
"What lies over yonder escarpment? 'Tis thy bad dudes, waiting for ye," Tania chuckled. Oliver rolled his eyes in turn.  
  
"Do grow up."  
  
**  
  
"Oh, we've been looking for hours! Can't we just sit down and eat something?" Tania whimpered as she leaned against a tree trunk and massaged her foot paw.  
  
"Shh! I hear something," Oliver clamped her snout shut with his paw and listened.  
  
".We're bound to get in trouble, Thorton! Why don't we just let the youngster go?"  
  
"No, Sooper, we need the ransom money! Outlaws need food for eating, ya know."  
  
"Aw, but she's so cute. I'd hate to see her stuck with a pair of buffoons like us."  
  
"Then put down your weapons and hand her over," Olive jumped from behind the brush and raised his sword, now burning magical flame. Tania stepped out behind him and raised her gun. The two bandits, Sooper and Thorton, were wearing white tunics with the silver crest for a pin at the chest just like any other commoner. The only difference they had from an ordinary pair of Cerinians were that they were carrying large automatics and Sooper was pulling a little blue kit from behind him. She didn't look very happy, but at least she was well fed.  
  
"Oh, see! I told you, Thorton, but you wouldn't listen! That's Oliver McCloud!"  
  
"And his trusty companion Tania Vulpon!" Tania shouted.  
  
"Huh? Who's she?" Thorton asked. Tania turned red beneath her fur.  
  
"Just let the kit go," Oliver said, "I can promise you some food to eat then."  
  
"You would? Why thank you," Sooper said, "Oh, and take these guns. They're awful heavy." And with that, he and Thorton dropped their guns and he let go of the little princess.  
  
"Wow, that was easy," Tania took the large machine guns away and Oliver cut the ropes binding the princess.  
  
"We don't wanna be thieves!" Sooper started crying. Thorton shook his head and kicked his friend in the shins.  
  
"You are a coward and an idiot. Now, we're gonna be hanged."  
  
"Can these two get any dumber?" Tania whispered to Oliver. He shook his head no.  
  
**  
  
"Well done, McCloud. This bag of gold is for you," the queen shoved a large sack into Oliver's paws. It weighed him to the ground.  
  
"Thank you," he managed to gasp out before he stumbled away outside.  
  
"Whoa, that's a lot of money!" Tania stared at the sack. Oliver shoved it into their shuttle and took a few ingots out and gave them to Sooper, who looked around suspiciously.  
  
"Mmm, this will buy a lot of potatoes," he said before he ran off again.  
  
"Does money get any cheaper than this?" Tania asked in disbelief.  
  
"Probably not," Oliver shrugged as he dragged a very happy and hyper Tania on board the Shenandoah.  
  
"I LOVE this job!"  
  
"Well, I hate it," Oliver grumbled.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because I'm stuck with you!" Oliver growled. He stopped suddenly. Where did that come from?  
  
"Oh." Tania stopped, too. Her eyes grew softer and sadder for a moment, then hard again, "Well, live with it!" She screamed as she banged the sliding door close and locked the air hatch. Oliver didn't bother to help her with the takeoff.  
  
**  
  
"Tania?"  
  
"Get lost."  
  
"One, I can't, because this thing is only five rooms big. Second, I don't want to. I want to say sorry about what I said," Oliver leaned against the doorframe. Tania glared at him from her bed. She threw a pillow at him and lay down, her snout buried in her second pillow.  
  
"Come on, Tania. You know I didn't mean it," Oliver neatly caught the pillow and flung it back.  
  
"Of course you did!" Tania muffled her yell with the feather pillow, "For a whole year, you meant that every time you looked at me! You hate me!" Oliver detected a sob in her voice.  
  
"I don't hate you. I hate the way you treat me," Oliver sat down on her bed and took her paw comfortingly. That felt strange, in an odd, parental way.  
  
"Don't touch me," she slid her paw quickly away from Oliver. The nice way of apologizing didn't work with Tania; it never did, but Oliver never tried the cruel way. But this time, she went way too far. He had gotten enough of her.  
  
"Look at me!" Oliver yelled as he pulled Tania by the collarbone away from the pillow. She looked up, startled. Oliver growled slightly, "If there should be anyone crying, it should be me! You: You want everything the way you like, not mine, and I live with it. I never get what I want, but I keep my yap shut, but do you? No! You never shut up! And I'm willing to bet that you can't even stop complaining for three seconds!"  
  
Oliver panted heavily when he was done talking. He finally vented his anger, after almost thirteen months with a vixen that could distinctly remember every fault that he had. Tania stared at him.  
  
"What happened to you?" Tania asked quietly, "We go on one mission that is not suicidal and you go ballistic on me?"  
  
"I was close to being ballistic for a long time now. I cracked, okay? Anyone would, being stuck with you," Oliver dug his claws deep into her shoulder. Tania didn't even flinch.  
  
"Am I really that bad?" Tania whispered. Oliver nodded angrily. She broke into tears again, but this time, it was silent, "I guess it comes from having so many kithood memories haunting you."  
  
"I had to see four of my family members die in front of my eyes, but I'm not a jerk," Oliver said, this time, a bit softer, but the angry tone remained. Tania looked up at him, and just then, the phone beeped, sending her a foot into the air from fright.  
  
"Hello," Oliver said as he picked up the receiver. Back then, people didn't like holograms.  
  
"Yeah, this is Amos Homely, from Caneria. I think I need some help from an invisible serial killer. He has the Sapphire of Skies, and I think he's mad at us," a panicky voice said over the line.  
  
"We'll take care of it. Just wait for a day or so, is that fine?"  
  
"It would be better if you came quicker, but yeah, that's ok."  
  
"Bye, then," Oliver said slowly right after he heard the receiver at the opposite end click down. Tania walked up beside him.  
  
"I'll make it up to you for being such an idiot. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it," Tania said softly. The arrogance and sarcasm in her tone disappeared.  
  
"Hmm, why don't you just roll over and die? That will do the galaxy a big favor," Oliver said coldly. Tania turned quickly around and went into her cabin, slamming the sliding door close behind her.  
  
**  
  
Carenia looked a lot like Cerinia. Names have a lot to do with looks. Being a white-clouded planet, people were good-natured. The white foxes all stuck out in the background of gray mountains and green trees. The sight of such a peaceful planet made Oliver feel a lot calmer.  
  
Tania must be feeling in the dumps. Oliver decided to read her mind for once and hear what she has to say. He never read her mind before because if she somehow knew, he'd be in big trouble. That didn't matter now, anyway, as Oliver had shown her who was the captain of the Shenandoah. The telepathic link was simple to establish, and Tania seemed to be sobbing, all the time. It must've been sixteen hours since Oliver insulted her.  
  
'Stupid Oliver. No, wait. Stupid Tania! Why? Aaargh! I hate him! I hate this stupid ship! I hate. I hate. I hate me!'  
  
"Tania? Do you want to talk about it?" Oliver asked, feeling guilty suddenly after hearing her words.  
  
"No! Go away!" Tania shouted from inside her cabin. Oliver got up from the pilot's seat and knocked sharply on her door.  
  
"Come on! You know I was angry. When I'm angry, well, I get uncontrollable."  
  
"Huh! I'm never controllable," Tania sobbed. Oliver grunted as he forced open the door with his claws. He heard the locking mechanism snap and the door was flung open.  
  
"Tania, I-"  
  
"AAARGH! Go! Go away!" Tania screamed as she threw stuff at Oliver. Oliver caught a pillow, a coin, a shirt, and a chair before he ran out, closing the broken door behind him.  
  
"Well, we're landing in a few minutes, so get ready."  
  
"."  
  
"Fine!" Oliver fumed as he jumped back into the seat and boosted hard towards Carenia, making sure to fling Tania off the floor as he sped off.  
  
**  
  
"Thank goodness that you've arrived! Hey, where's, uh, what's her name?" Amos asked as Oliver jumped out from the ship and into the forest. He landed a bit rougher than he intended, missing his zone of target.  
  
"Tania. She doesn't feel well today," Oliver grumbled. Amos nodded.  
  
"The town's over that way," he pointed. Amos was wearing a baggy, gray shirt with baggy, gray pants. His cloths flopped in the wind as he raised a paw; "I wish you good luck."  
  
"Thanks," Oliver said nonchalantly. He could almost feel Amos' stare after him.  
  
Oliver crashed through the bushes angrily until he saw the first few houses. Carenia was more of a technologically developed planet, unlike the traditional Cerinia. The thing that this planet lacked was magic. The only valuable magical things here were the Sapphire of Skies and the Bow, itself being quite unnamed for now.  
  
The cement houses and the internal combustion cars passed, unnoticed by Oliver as he scanned every Arctic Fox he met with his mind-reading capabilities. So far, everyone was innocent.  
  
Suddenly, Oliver came across the mind of an evil maniac. The maniac, however, was nowhere to be seen on the street. Of course, he was invisible. By reading the maniac's mind, however, Oliver reached out instinctively and grabbed onto a furry arm and didn't exist in the realm of his eyeballs.  
  
"Ack!" A white fox wearing black clothes materialized out of thin air beside Oliver. He carried a silenced blaster pistol, and was now aiming it at Oliver. Oliver didn't let go.  
  
"One quick question for a quick killer: Why?" Oliver, in a very swift motion, grabbed the fox's other arm and wrenched the gun away. The maniac howled in pain.  
  
"Life sucks!" He growled.  
  
"Not for everyone," Oliver tripped the fox in a quick kick and pinned him to the ground, chest down.  
  
"Let go! I can give you a lot! I can give you wealth!" He screamed.  
  
"That, I don't want," Oliver snapped the Sapphire's thin, golden chain from the fox's neck, "You, my friend, are a fool for stealing this."  
  
"Oh, you got him already. I was expecting you to live on this planet for a few months, at the least," Amos ran up to Oliver and cuffed the maniac, "Get rid of that. I mean, give it to someone who is least likely to go nuts on innocent lives."  
  
Oliver quickly scanned the memories of the crowd that just built up. One of them, a young shopkeeper, it seems, had a good mind. Oliver walked up to him and handed him the Sapphire while no one was looking.  
  
"Your name?"  
  
"Jonathan White," he stuttered.  
  
"Keep this safe. Don't tell anyone. Never use it," Oliver said quickly, "Understand?"  
  
"Perfectly, sir."  
  
"Good. Treat it like a family heirloom, but don't tell your kits what it does."  
  
"Sure thing. Makes sense," John whispered as Oliver ran quickly away, before receiving a pat on the back from many a white fox.  
  
**  
  
"And Tania thinks this is a clear job. Damn, this is confusing," Oliver muttered to himself as he lay on his bed, trying to understand what he did. Went to a planet; caught a thief; took the Sapphire; gave the Sapphire to a regular citizen. Messed up, really.  
  
It was the second day since the Carenia incident, and Tania was still in her room. Oliver was getting really worried, since he knew that she wasn't drinking or eating. She was still apparently mad, but Oliver didn't understand why she didn't even come out of her room.  
  
"Tania? Do you want some fish?" Oliver asked timidly without opening the door.  
  
"Uh, yeah." Tania whispered. Oliver rushed to prepare a steaming plateful of salmon, Tania's favorite, with garlic and thyme, just as she liked it. Since they didn't have an oven, Oliver just used the microwave to heat the fish up. After adding a bit of lemon and salt, Oliver was satisfied that Tania would be at least a bit happier.  
  
"Hey," Oliver said as he pushed the door open. Tania must've been busy during the two days, because her usually messy cabin was cleaned and polished up. Tania's books and paperwork was stashed in a filing cabinet in front of her bed and her closet looked a lot neater. Tania herself didn't look quite as good.  
  
Tania looked a lot thinner and the circles under her eyes were pitch black. So she wasn't sleeping, either. Her deep crimson shirt was wrinkled and she somehow managed to wear a hole on the knee of her red pants. She was wearing some kind of red ruby on her neck that Oliver didn't notice before.  
  
"Are you okay?" Oliver asked as he set down the dish on Tania's lap. Tania shook her head.  
  
"Do I look okay?" She rasped.  
  
"I know you're still mad, but-"  
  
"Mad? Oliver, you've gone totally nuts, haven't you? I'm scared!" Tania didn't look up as she started to devour the fish quite ravenously.  
  
"Scared? Of me? Listen to yourself, Tania. Weren't those the words that you vowed never to say in front of me?" Oliver laughed. Tania gave him a look of sorrow as she finished the fillet. That was quick. Normally, Tania spends more than half an hour on dinner.  
  
"I make empty threats all the time," Tania whispered.  
  
"Yeah, but one thing that I know from you is that you don't make empty promises. The good ones, I mean," Oliver took the dish from her paws and clanged it noisily in the dishwasher. Tania waited patiently for him to return. Just as Oliver's bottom touched her mattress, he was knocked over by her in a tackle. For a moment, Oliver panicked, but then he heard her sobs.  
  
"Oliver, Oliver. You are such a good friend. No matter what I do, do you always have to point out the good things?" Tania hugged him hard, but at least Oliver could still breathe.  
  
"I don't think I did that half a week ago, though. I'm so-"  
  
"Don't say it! I am the one who has to say sorry," Tania's tail curled warmly against Oliver's.  
  
"Uh, you know that you're gonna regret this later, right?" He asked, but didn't pull away.  
  
"Was that a threat?"  
  
"Oh, no. Quite the contrary, I think. But I might as well take advantage of you now anyway," Oliver smiled evilly and pressed his lips to Tania's. She was caught off guard, but she kissed back after a few moments.  
  
"I never thought I'd do that," Tania muttered as she broke their embrace. Oliver nodded.  
  
"Me neither. I really hope this relationship lasts long, though," Oliver hugged Tania tightly, "I think the real you is better than the horrifying mask you put on every time I come near." Tania nodded. People are different than they seem, all right.  
  
**  
  
A/N: Yeah, explanations and more crappy explanations. They suck, but they're the best I can think of now. 


End file.
